Chapter 3. System Specific Notes

Table of Contents
3.1. Solaris
3.2. Linux
3.3. AIX
3.4. AppleTalk Support

The following are a set of suggestions and recommendations for specific systems.

3.1. Solaris

The Sun Microsystems Solaris printing system is derived from the System V UNIX system. Please see the Solaris, HP, and SysVR4 Derived Systems installation information for a detailed description of how to install LPRng and remove the Solaris Print Services.

If you want to simply forward jobs from a Solaris system to a BSD print spooling system you can use the following commands to create a printer. Check your specific system references and man pages for options:

    h4: {67} # lpsystem -t bsd servername   # add server
    h4: {68} # lpadmin -p pr -s servername -T unknown -I any # set up printer
    h4: {69} # accept pr   # enable queueing
    h4: {70} # enable pr   # enable printing
    h4: {71} # lpstat -t   # show status
    scheduler is running
    system for pr: servername
    lp accepting requests since Mon Aug  6 12:00:00 PST 2000
    Printer: pr@servername  'Hp : Laserwriter' (printing disabled)
     Queue: 1 printable job
     Rank  Owner/ID            Class Job Files            Size Time
    1      papowell@h4+207       A   207 h4.023205           3 18:24:54


The above commands will create the necessary directories and files for the printer. If you want to use the lp -o option syntax to pass options to the LPRng print spooler you will have to enable this by hand. The /etc/printers.conf (this may be in some other directory besides /etc) needs to be modified so that it allows options to be passed using the Solaris convention, which is to put them on the S or O line of the control file. For example:

    #
    # The preferred method of modifying this file is through the use of
    # lpset(1M) or fncreate_printer(1M)
    #
    pr:bsdaddr=servername,pr,Solaris:
    _default:use=pr:


The bsdaddr=host,printer[,Solaris] indicates that the entry is for a remote RFC1179 printer on server host with name printer. The Solaris option indicates that the Solars extensions to the RFC1179 protocol are to be used.