# Your advice: cups or lpd?



## Caliante (Nov 10, 2010)

Hi all 

Having gone through the most horrible ports upgrade experience I have ever seen (from start to finish multiple weeks, finally got there thanks to the extremely patient help of a member here, thanks again a thousand times ), I am now a happy owner of 8.1 with all ports upgraded to their latest version as well (pfff, it's like giving birth to a way too big baby).

Next step is to finally get my printing to work. Before all the upgrades, I was on 8.0. I managed to install cups, however, for some strange reason that didn't quite work: printing a page would lead to the printer starting to think (flash lights) for perhaps as much half an hour, to then finally print out one page (whereas under XP that printer prints immediately). Of course, if you want to print a 10 pages document that means getting up early in the morning. So that needs to be fixed.

As I understand it, I can reinstall cups and try to get it work, but it has also been suggested to use lpd. I've found some articles about it, and lpd together with appsfilter seems plausible. I actually want no hassle with it: I want a print setup that can print any document without having to 'mess around' with filters, no matter what the actual content is; I want it printed the way the document appears on the screen ((C) Michael Lucas for writing this somewhere :e)).

The printer is an old HP Laserjet 6, connected via LPT.

So, could any of you give me any recommendation as to which print system to use? Do I stick with cups, or do I go the lpd-route? Of course, as always, I am in your debt for helping me out 

Thank you,

Bye,


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 10, 2010)

I nowadays use the CLI tools.  Search the forum for a2ps and a thread might have a complete CLI solution avail. Tricky to setup print-from-browser sometimes though. (Many forum members probably print more often and can offer better advice.)


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## Caliante (Nov 10, 2010)

jb_fvwm2 said:
			
		

> I nowadays use the CLI tools.  Search the forum for a2ps and a thread might have a complete CLI solution avail. Tricky to setup print-from-browser sometimes though. (Many forum members probably print more often and can offer better advice.)



Thanks for your reply; appreciated. 

I doubt I see myself printing a webpage via CLI 

:e

No, seriously, I want to simply print either a *.pdf, *.doc or a web page or something like that without hassle, so click 'print' on some fancy icon and be gone with it.


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## Kiiski (Nov 10, 2010)

I installed lpd according to handbook:

http://http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/printing.html

In my opinion it's lot simpler than cups, but that is of course personal opinion.
In gui programs I choose to "print with command" lpr or similar.
For me it has worked great, meaning no hassles.

Maybe I should add that I use network printing.

Just my 2 cents


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## noz (Nov 10, 2010)

I use CUPS and followed the instructions here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/index.html.  Since you're using ports, don't forget to do the last page "Fine Tuning CUPS-Related Ports".

When you get CUPS working, this port might come in handy once in a while: print/cups-pdf.


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## aragon (Nov 10, 2010)

My advice: throw the printer away.


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## wblock@ (Nov 10, 2010)

aragon said:
			
		

> My advice: throw the printer away.



Only if it's a LJ 5L or 6L.

I use lpd(8), because CUPS works fine when it works, but is frustratingly difficult to debug.

"lpd Printing With FreeBSD" and a related article, "Buying A Used Laser Printer".


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## phoenix (Nov 10, 2010)

If it's an inkjet, of any kind, chuck it in the dumpster and buy a laser.    Even colour lasers are under $200 CDN nowadays.  4 years later, we're still using the original "starter" toner cartridge in our hand-me-down (2 others used it for almost a year before) Samsung ML-2010.  I smile when I think about how much we've saved since ditching the last inkjet printer in our house.  

If it's an ancient laser printer (HP LaserJet 3/4/5 era), either works.

If it's a laser from around the Windows 98/2K / System 7/8/9 days, lpd may work better than CUPS.

If it's a current-ish model printer, with MacOS X support, then use CUPS.  All MacOS X printing is done via CUPS, and you can use their CUPS ppd file on any CUPS system.

Checking the printer listings on the Open Printing website can be very useful when looking to buy a new printer, or to get an old one working.  If it's not listed on there as "working", it's a good bet you can avoid wasting time trying to get it to print.


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## wblock@ (Nov 11, 2010)

Since we're adding tips: *don't buy "host-based" printers*, any laser that doesn't natively support PCL or PostScript.  Maybe it's the 90% of host-based printers that make the rest look bad, but there's no reason to take the risk when used business-class lasers are available so cheaply.


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## Caliante (Nov 11, 2010)

Thanks to all  Since it's a rather old HP Laserjet 6P, I think I should go with lpd based on what I read.


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## phoenix (Nov 12, 2010)

LaserJet 5 and 6 work perfectly with CUPS.  We use these in some schools.  There's even drivers for them included with CUPS.  It's the older 3/4 and 5s you need to watch out for.


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## Caliante (Nov 14, 2010)

Time for a noob question again 

e)

On following the hand book for lpd I do:

`grep ppc1 /var/run/dmesg.boot`
(ppc0 turned out not be installed).

I get:


```
ppc1: <NetMos NM9805 1284 Printer port> port 0xe800-0xe807,0xe480-0xe487,0xe400-0xe407,0xe080-0xe087,0xe000-0xe007,0xdc00-0xdc0f irq 17 at device 1.0 on pci5
ppc1: Generic chipset (EPP/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc1: [ITHREAD]
ppbus0: <Parallel port bus> on ppc1
```

However, in /boot/device.hints it says:


```
hint.ppc.0.at="isa"
hint.ppc.0.irq="7"
```

This doesn't seem to be correct; it should be ppc.1, right?

Also, do I need to add:


```
device ppc
```

in this /boot/device.hints?

Finally, if ppc.1 is correct, how come cups did print at all in the past, although very slowly?

Thank you for any comments :f


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