Solved Printing Problems & Learning LPD/CUPS

I am currently having issues printing to two printers. A Sharp MX-2300N & MX-2301N. From what I can ascertain both support Postscript and even have dedicated downloads for such from the manufacturers website; however, after installing into CUPS with appropriate PPD file nothing comes out of the printers. CUPS logs show "successful" printing.

I am relatively new to printing on FreeBSD and wonder if there are any good sources of where to learn either LPD or CUPS to enable printing from these printers?

I have looked at the guide linked from the Handbook and Openprinting website. They pretty much indicate that you find the appropriate PPD, point CUPS at the printer and all should work, so anything that would delve into a little more detail would be appreciated. I hope to understand the printing process as I also have an OKI printer to eventually attach and print to as well and I should imagine that will also give me trouble.

Many thanks!
 
A Sharp MX-2300N & MX-2301N.
Both printers are network capable (free standing printer servers) and full PostScript printers. They need no driver. PPD PostScript Printer Description file is not necessary until we get things to print.
The /etc/printcap file should look something like this.

Code:
rp|MX-2300N:\
     :lp=:rm=ip_address_of_MX-2300N:\
     :rp=lp:\
     :sh:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
     :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

Make sure spool has permission 775 and that group membership is daemon something like

Code:
drwxrwxr-x  2 root  daemon  512 Mar  8 12:51 ldp

Code:
cat 'lpd_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf

Reboot and you should be able to print with the command

lpr -PMX-2300N filename.ps

If it didn't work post the lpd log file.
 
any good sources of where to learn either LPD or CUPS to enable printing from these printers?

The Handbook chapter on printing is essentially an expanded version of my web document. It shows how to set up LPD. CUPS can interfere with that, because it installs not-quite-compatible versions of commands with the same names (lpr) as the real versions. The examples there are tested.

If it were me, I'd connect both printers to the network, not USB. Then set them up as shown in that chapter and make sure that the real lpr and lpd are in the path before the CUPS versions.
 
Thanks all!

I did a little lateral thinking booted an Ubuntu based distribution to see how that connected (someone I knew reported success with such). Basically turned out that I needed extra filters and eventually was able to print using a generic PCL6 driver (PXLCOLOR.PPD).

Okay, that is going around the houses somewhat to achieve printing but it works and is robust. Especially when compared with some of the more elegant and simpler solutions suggested.

With a little bit of assumption should a printer speak a particular language (SPL, GDI, PCL, etc) I seemingly can print to those using the appropriate filter.

I am currently having a secondary problem with a Samsung ML-1660 printer but I will post separately about this.

Thanks once again.
 

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With a little bit of assumption should a printer speak a particular language (SPL, GDI, PCL, etc) I seemingly can print to those using the appropriate filter.
Just to be clear, if the printer supports Postscript or Postscript emulation, you should be able to send the print job directly to the printer. That said, OpenPrinting recommended the pxlcolor ghostscript driver and said nothing about the MX-2300N being Postscript capable. This spec sheet also indicates that the MX-2300N cannot directly process Postscript - I think you made the correct choice using the pxlcolor filter.

You will need print/splix filters for the Samsung ML-1660.
 
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