Setting Up Printers That are Associated With PPD Files

You can set up a printer and associate that printer with a PPD file by using either Solaris Print Manager or LP print commands.

When adding or modifying a printer in Solaris Print Manager, the default option is to use PPD files. The Use PPD files attribute is located in the Print Manager drop-down menu of Solaris Print Manager. This default option enables you to select the printer make, model, and driver when you add new printer or modify an existing printer. To deselect this attribute, remove the checkmark from the check box. For more information about how to specify PPD files when a adding a printer, see Administering Printers That Are Associated With PPD Files (Task Map).

To specify a PPD file when adding or modifying a printer by using LP print commands, use the lpadmin command with the -n option. For more information, see How to Specify a PPD File When Adding a New Printer by using LP Print Commands.

Using PPD Files When Setting Up a Printer in Solaris Print Manager

Solaris Print Manager includes a Use PPD files option that is the default when you create a new print queue or modify an existing print queue. If you do not want to specify a PPD file, you can override this option by removing the checkmark from the check box. To switch back to using PPD files, recheck the Use PPD files check box.

Note that if you create a new print queue or modify an existing print queue with PPD files in Solaris Print Manger, you cannot assign the printer type or file content type printer definitions. However, If you do not use PPD files when creating a print queue, you can assign these printer definitions by deselecting the Use PPD files attribute in the Solaris Print Manager drop-down menu.

To create a print queue with PPD files, you are required to provide the following information:

Printer make
Printer model
Printer driver

The definitions for printer make, model, and printer driver are available in Solaris Print Manager when you create a print queue with the Use PPD files option selected. Note that this option is the default.

Note - You do not need to create a print queue that uses PPD files. Also, PPD files are not required for printers that already contain the RIP feature. You can continue to use Solaris Print Manager to configure these printers you did previously. To do so, before adding the printer, remove the checkmark from the Use PPD files check box.

For a detailed description of the printer make, printer model, and printer driver printer definitions, see Setting Printer Definitions.

Specifying a PPD File When Setting Up a Printer by Using LP Print Commands

Use the -n option with the lpadmin command to specify a PPD file when creating a new print queue or modifying an existing print queue.

For example, to add the print queue, foobar, to a Lexmark printer, you would type:

# lpadmin -p foobar -v device -I postscript -m standard_foomatic \ -n /path/Lexmark-Optra_E312-Postscript.ppd.gz

When using the lpadmin -n command to specify a PPD file, you must provide the full path to the PPD file.

Note - If you use the lpadmin -n command to add a PPD file, and the repository that you specify in the PPD file path does not exist on the system, a copy of the PPD file is stored in the user label directory, within the user repository. This directory is located at /var/lp/ppd/user/manufacturer/ppd-file. The Solaris Print Manager cache is then updated to reflect the printer information from the recently added PPD file. For more information, see Chapter 9, Administering Printers by Using the PPD File Management Utility (Tasks).

How to Specify a PPD File When Adding a New Printer by using LP Print Commands

When you use the lpadmin command with the -n option to specify a PPD file, you are required to provide the full path to the PPD file. If you choose to use a PPD file that is located in a different directory, you must specify the full path to that file.

Become superuser or assume an equivalent role.
Roles contain authorizations and privileged commands. For more information about roles, see Configuring RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Security Services.
To specify a PPD file, use the lpadmin command with the following options:
```
# lpadmin -p foo -n /home/user/stuff/ppd-file -m \ standard_foomatic -I postscript -v /device
```
-p

Specifies the printer name

-n

Specifies to use a PPD file

-m

Specifies the interface script for utilizing PPD files

-v

Specifies the port device that the printer will use

Example 4-11 Specifying a PPD File When Setting Up a Printer

For example, to specify the xyz.ppd file that is located in the user's home directory, you would type the following command:

# lpadmin -p foo -n /home/user/stuff/xyz.ppd -m \ standard_foomatic -I postscript -v /device