CUPS on SuSE 10. need ascii print to file

[davep76]

The operating system is SuSE 10 SP3.

I need to configure an ascii printer, in CUPS version 1.1, to send its output to a file.

I've figured out how to configure a null printer but need the output to go to a specific path and filename.

There is probably a way to change something in the PPD file but I cant find a description of the various options in that file.

There is a lot of documentation about CUPS out there but all of it assumes that you want to print to an actual printer.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

If your CUPS version is 1.1.18 or newer, you could add a setting:

FileDevice Yes

in your /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.

This setting will allow you to create printer devices using the "file:/filename" URL, like "file:/specific/path/filename" for example.

Such a printer cannot accept print jobs of type "application/octet-stream", i.e. they must be recognizable by CUPS as something other than raw print data.

The file will contain the output of the latest print job only: subsequent print jobs will overwrite previous ones. The file will be written using the identity of the user cupsd runs as ( = usually as root).

Once you've created the necessary file printer(s), you can reset the FileDevice setting back to the default value. The FileDevice setting in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf only controls whether new file printers can be created or not; it has no effect on already existing print queues that use a printer URL of type "file:".

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It's also relatively simple to create your own CUPS printing backends using scripts. Here are two examples, a simple one and an advanced one:

http://osdir.com/ml/printing.cups.devel/2004-10/msg00007.html

(This was a result of googling for "cups print to file" and quickly browsing through the first three links, by the way.)

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If the application that produces the print-out data accepts a custom print command, you could side-step the entire CUPS printing system, by supplying as a "print command" a small script that essentially contains only a command like this:

cat > /specific/path/filename

(Normally, the application will simply pipe its print-out data to the appropriate "lp" or "lpr" command. You'll only need to make the application to pipe its print-out to a command or script that writes standard input to a file of your choosing, and your problem is solved.)

MK

[davep76]

I think that is what I am looking for, I will let you know if that is the solution.

I admit this is a kludge, wasnt my idea.

Thanks!

[davep76]

After changing the FileDevice parameter in cupsd.conf I was able to create a printer with the lpadmin command:

lpadmin -p rptx -v file:/var/opt/rpt/rptx -P /usr/share/cups/model/laserjet.ppd

But when we attempt to print to this file the result is data that is not in a readable format.

Which model file will give me plain ASCII output (in the file) ?

Thanks

[Matti_Kurkela]

The laserjet.ppd will probably produce some version of PCL printing language.

For text-only output, attached is a textonly.ppd file that comes with the standard CUPS installation on Debian 5.0. Doesn't SuSE 10 have it?

MK

[Matti_Kurkela]

Oops, looks like the textonly.ppd also requires the accompanying "textonly" filter script that should be placed into the CUPS filter directory (/usr/lib/cups/filter in Debian 5.0). Here's it.

MK

[davep76]

This is working great now. The generated file is human readable.

Many Thanks!!

Now, they just need one more thing.

Can the generated file have a random number as part of the filename so we dont keep overwriting the same file ?

I tried passing the following to the lpadmin command -v option:

file:/var/opt/rpt/fsp.$$

thinking that the $$ would be replaced with the process ID every time a new output file was generated. Unfortunately this is interpreted once when the lpadmin command is executed. I also tried backslashes and quoting.

Is what I am asking for even possible ?

Thanks in advance and sorry to be a pest.

[Dennis Handly]

>I tried passing the following: file:/var/opt/rpt/fsp.$$
>thinking that the $$ would be replaced with the process ID every time a new output file was generated.

This is the PID of the shell, which won't change, unless a subshell is created.

>Is what I am asking for even possible?

Sure, create another dummy shell, for a real shell:
file:/var/opt/rpt/fsp.$($SHELL -c 'echo $$')

[davep76]

Close, but no cigar. This queue is always printing to a file with the same number every time.

Does CUPs, at any point, have a script that controls what the generated filename looks like ? That would be appear to be the only way to achieve this since the lpadmin command expects a literal expression as an argument to the -v option.

Thanks

[Viktor Balogh]

reference to the newer post:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1446100