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Department of Computer Science

Technical Services and Support

Printing on Linux

by Hanz Makmur – Oct 2009
 

These instructions will show you how to print to Computer Science public printers. The first section is for LCSR-maintained machines, and the second is for user-maintained machines. See the list of available CS printers for more detailed info.

1. Setting Up Printing from CUPS on Linux
 
By default, all print jobs will have a header/banner page. If you have a private printer or plan to print to any color or poster printer, you should turn off the banner page printed before each job.

Other Linux/Unix machines not maintained by LCSR staff may have their printing engine. These machines are normally administered by the user and beyond the control of LCSR staff. For these machines, the simplest way to print to Computer Science printers is as follows the following:

    1. Install cups software for your Linux OS.
    2. Edit or add if one does not exist a file named  /etc/cups/client.conf enter this line, and save it.
      ServerName printserver.cs.rutgers.edu

      After you restart your CUPSD, you can print to all printers available on printserver.cs.rutgers.edu.

    3. Verifying your setup:
      To see a list of available printer queues, type  lpstat -p
      To check the specific printer queue type,  use the lpq -P printername.
    4. To set your default printer to printer named cbim_printer_1 in Linux bash shell, type:
      export PRINTER=cbim_printer_1, or add this line to your .bashrc file so that you don’t have to do it again after you log in.
2. Printing from Linux/Unix.

Once you have set up your Linux printer queue to print, you must issue a standard print command from your application.

To print from a Unix shell, normally, you would enter the following:

lpr -P printername filename

To print without a banner page, enter the following command.

lpr -h -P printeraname filename

To print in single sided on printers defaulting in duplex, you would enter:

lpr -P printername -o sides=one-sided filename

There are a lot of options you can set with a CUPS driver. See CUPS printing options for further details. CUPS options do not work with SunOS machines.


Limitation: All laser printers have a maximum of 50 pages/job. 

For more info, see the list of Computer Science Public Printers page.

For help with our systems or immediate assistance, visit LCSR Operator at CoRE 235 or call 848-445-2443. Otherwise, see CS HelpDesk. Don’t forget to include your NetID along with descriptions of your problem.