Friday, 30 July 2004
If you have a linux system and want to install a printer far from your computer using a print server you should definitely read this howto.
Conventions used
This Howto is not strict related My Handy Restaurant, but more specifically to CUPSYS for linux.
Although My Handy Restaurant perfectly works under Microsoft Windows, in this page it is supposed you are using a linux or unix operating system.
If you're not using such a system, this howto is totally useless for you because CUPSYS is only available for unix OSes.
The system used to test this howto is GNU/Linux Debian. The installed CUPSYS ver. is 1.1.20 the attached printserver is D-link DP-101P+.
Requirements
* Working CUPSYS (Cups)
* Printserver
* A browser
* Administrator privileges (root access)
Install the printer
Point your browser to http://localhost:631/ page.
Click on manage printers link and then on the Add printer button.
When prompted for username and password, provide root and your password
Confirm by clicking on the Ok button when prompted.
Give a name to the printer and optionally location and description.
After clicking on continue you have to choose the protocol (device list). You can be quite confident that your printserver will correctly work with lpd/lpr protocol because it's widely supported. For more info conslut your pintserver manual.
We choose lpd/lpr.
Now we are asked for the device uri. To fill this you have to know the ip address or the hostname of your printserver and queue name of the printer attached to it. Often the queue name is something like lpt1, lp1 or a name that you can set in the printserver configuration interface.
In our case the printserver is 192.168.1.253 and the print queue name is lpt1, so we will fill the text field as follows:
lpd://192.168.1.253/lpt1
We will use no driver here because we are going to use My Handy Restaurant internal driver, so we can set the raw driver when asked.
The only available option next is raw queue. This means that CUPSYS only work as a print queue system.
Testing the printer
The first check you can make is reading the printer state line at http://localhost:631/printers . It should be "Printer State: idle, accepting jobs".
An other test can be the print test page link. It will pint a lot of text on your printer so maybe you will need to switch it off while it's printing. :-P
You could also type this in console:
echo ciao | lp -d name_of_the_printer
after this you should obtain ciao pinted on your printer and this output in the console.
request id is name_of_the_printer-1 (1 file(s))
note that name_of_the_printer-1 will be different because the first word is your printer name and the number is the print job ID.
Installing the printer in My Handy Restaurant
Point your browser in http://localhost/myhandyrestaurant_dir/ and enter the management section.
From the system menu choose printers.
Click on the insert a new record link.
In the following form you can leave the ID as suggested by the system. Set internal name as you wish, it can be any name you want because it will only be used to identify this printer in My Handy Restaurant.
Now fill the printing queue name with the name you provided wile installing the printer in CUPSYS. It should be exactly the same name, otherwise you will get no print.
The others fields are self explanatory and will also be covered in a dedicated howto.
Now the printer you installed should be available and working in both the system and in My Handy Restaurant.
Have fun!
IvanoeZ