Some notes from GNHLUG Meeting

Linuxworld is next week.

Dave has an article in the latest "Linux Magazine": pdf here.

Demonstration of Ruby on Rails for next month from Dave.

Usenix having annual tech conference Aprial 10-15, 2005: For more information, see homepage

Peterborough meeting, this thursday in Peterborough: On Knoppix and dual boot machines

For information on how to set up Fedora Core yum, see fedorafaq

Official presentation start: Presentation on CUPS

CUPS is becoming the standard printing system on most distros, and works really well when it works. These are some notes on how to set it up locally.

In order to print over cups, the printer is broadcasting data on which printers there are. Getting the client to work is typically just install, and you're done: getting the server to work is a bit different. Thing you always need is cups server, client, and gimp-print foomatic. If you just install cups you get a very limited number of printers supported. HPIJS driver, foomatic, gimp-print is a lot of printers, lots of support.

localhost:631 will show what printers you have available: web interface. You need to ensure that you only have each server broadcasting about local printers. Printer config is all done via clients: you can control authentication, or who can change the aspects of them.

Demonstration using abiword: Word, Wordperfect, Staroffice formats. List of printers from CUPS: page layouts and so on can be changed via abiword, but resolution and so on are set throuhg commandline or web interface. Question is posed: you can print to a PDF Distiller: so, you can run print jobs through a piepeline.

CUPS clients listen for printer broadcasts , which are sent out on the subnet over IPP. You can set up a local server which will rebroadcast information about a far away printer: sitting here, I could set up an ipp printer on my machiene and all the other wireless laptops here would see it in their cups client enabled print queue.

Does CUPS run over SMB? The answer is yes: Windows machines will see the cups network printer. Coming the other way around: just add a smb printer: smb://printername.e Can install printers over SMB to a windows machine: lots of cups setup that you can 'breeze through', but is useful for more complex things like setting up drivers over network. During setup, cups will recommend print drivers: higher quality ones, for example. Print drivers are actually "postscript to printer-specific-format filter" files: a "PPD" file which tells the printer how to make those translations.

Setup: Need to set a "ServerName" (ip address or something that people can look up): lots of other configuration details, but very little of it needed. Ensure that browsing is on, set a port, then set options: "BrowseAddress @LOCAL" will allow the local network to browse the web interface.

Showing off sharing of printers in the local wireless net: several people in the room with different cups clients broadcasting print info.

IPP Printing RFCs: 3239, 3381, 3510 2910 , 2569

Demonstration of a program called xpp, which allows you to print a text file with printer options. A pretty GUI that shows all the options that will allow you to change the printer. cups-xpp

Also set up a CUPS server quickly and easily: plug it in and it "just worked" when using a parrallel port->ethernet dongle.

And that's it that I'm going to keep writing. Which I wasn't doing all that well anyway.