linux and jetdirect/hp printers

[Jon Pierce]

Hi,

I have just set up RedHat Linux 7.0 and would like to be able to print to several of my HP Laserjets w/Jetdirect cards in them. First, are there drivers available for the 5L, 2100, and 4000 series for Linux, or do I just emulate an HP4? And second, how would I configure these printers? The documentation seems to be for local, SMB, remote Unix queue, or Netware, but nothing for IP print server.

Thanks in advance....


Thanks in advance....

[Tim Malnati]

I have several printers configured on my Linux box but I don't often use them. HP has Web JetAdmin available for Linux but I have not installed it. If I recall correctly I just used one of the GUI configuration options available under the KDE manager and things were relatively straight forward. I seem to recall specifying a PCL flavor for the HP's and something equivolent to 'dumb' for the others. I don't think that HP currently produces any model specific drivers for Linux, although they might be part of Web JetAdmin. I didn't want the extra overhead and I'm not a fan of the product anyway. My printing needs are minimal so I don't have any need for accessing specific trays, etc.

[Calvin Dodge · Accepted solution]

It's pretty easy to do this with Red Hat.

On the printer end, assign an IP address to each JetDirect card, and tell the printer to enable LPD printing.

On the server end - use printtool.

For each printer:
Tell printtool the printer is using a remote Unix queue, and give it the IP address of the JetDirect card in question.

If the printer supports Postscript, select "Postscript printer" from the "input filter" menu - otherwise, you're probably safe with "HP Laserjet Series 4/5/6 non-Postscript".

Once you've created a printer entry, select "Tests", then "Print Postscript test page" (it will translate to PCL if you selected "non-Postscript").

That's all it _should_ take. FWIW, at my last job we had a single Linux box handling 10 networked HP printers (using LPRng (which comes with RH7) - lpd couldn't manage that many), and it's been working pretty well in the 6 months since I left there.

[Nick Cross]

To answer your second question use CUPS to configure your remote printers, we used to use lpd and samba, but now CUPS, it's fantastic, our 8 linux servers and 34 printers were all a doddle to setup.

The Common UNIX Printing System
http://www.cups.org/

oh, and its GNU GPL...

Nick.