I am running RHEL 5.6 and 7.2
Cups versions 1.1 and 1.6

Hello All, my employer just got a new HP printer and am trying to setup a print queue for its cassette tray. I am able to get the default letter tray to work but am unable to get another tray to print out a custom size of "306 792" paper. When adding the printer via gui, the drivers for my make and model do not exist.

Would i need to create a custom ppd file for this?
Login to hp.com and get the correct drivers and install?

Any advice / thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

It would be a good idea to tell us the actual model concerned here. Depending on the model, you may find that it is supported by HPLIP already.

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...ices/index.htm

Some LaserJets are also supported by foomatic drivers
http://www.openprinting.org/printers
http://distro.ibiblio.org/smeserver/...atic-ppds.html

I assume you have configured the printer (by selecting some related model) already? In general, an existing static PPD file can often be edited to accommodate additional features that another similar model is capable of supporting, eg paper sizes, trays, dpi settings etc.

To help you tie how the CUPS filter chain and PPD files work together, here's some good CUPS documentation...
https://www.cups.org/doc/postscript-driver.html
https://www.cups.org/doc/raster-driver.html
https://www.cups.org/doc/ppd-compiler.html

Thanks Ferrari , for the response with the links to go along with it. The printer that we have is a HP Laserjet M606. I found the related drivers on my newer print server which is running cups 1.6. This queue is working correctly.

The problematic Print server is running cups 1.1. We will eventually get off of this server in July but am having issues. I have made changes to the ppd files by adding custom pagesize, paper dimensions, Image Area and page region to the ppd file. This actually worked but its off center. I just need to figure out how to make it centered and then all will be good. Do you have any ideas regarding this?

Does changing the 'ImageableArea' parameters for given paper sizes help? It's not clear to me why the PPD in your later CUPS server would behave differently to an earlier version, but perhaps the underlying ghostscript version is at play here. There are changes with recent CUPS versions expecting PDF data by default (whereas previously it was PostScript), so the PDF-based CUPS workflow utilizes different rasterization filters in the chain which may impact here (eg pdftopdf > gstoraster > hpcups > backend)
https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/en/...int_Job_Format

You can run the filter chain by hand (its tedious), but that can help with finding where an issue may lie
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_t...ilters_by_hand

The following 'how to' thread gives a good explanation of HPLIP workflow and various PPD parameters involved with borderless printing. It may be of benefit here for an idea on fixing an offset too...
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=253497

The older version of cups i have is not compatiable with hplip due to the OS being super old. On the newer version of cups I have the correct drivers and can find the correct model/make so it prints out fine. Its just problematic in the old version because I have to figure out which driver works best with it. Right now I am using Generic Postscript Printer and adding the below things to the ppd file.

Also, I tried to work with the "ImageableArea" today but it seems not to affect the positioning. The smallest we can set the tray size is 5.8 x 11 inches. Our paper size is 4.25 x 11 inches so I believe this is the problem. So i'm trying to set the margins from the left side of the paper further to the right because all the print is cutoff on the left side of the paper. (Hopefully that makes sense)

I added the following to the ppd file:
*PageSize SPLabel: "<</PageSize[306 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*PageRegion SPLabel: "<</PageSize[306 792]/ImagingBBox null>>setpagedevice"
*ImageableArea SPLabel: "18 36 288 756"
*PaperDimension SPLabel: "306 792"

I will check out the following links. Thanks again for the reply. Awesome information.

Your options may be limited here. I recall problems like this being reported with old CUPS versions and foomatic drivers.

I don't have a complete picture of your network/printing environment, and I am wondering why the need for two print servers? Are both print servers required to reach this LaserJet M606 printer? Is it a viable option for the old print server to slave to the new print server, and just configure it with a raw print queue, such that the new print server does actual printer driving?

We only have one production print server that is active. The 2nd print server is running newer versions of OS and CUPS. It will replace the current cups server in July. Does that answer your question?

If my printer tray is 5.88 by 11 inches and my paper size is 4.25 by 11 inches, do you think it is possible to manipulate attributes in the ppd file to get text to print with the correct margins?

Thanks, makes things clear.

I'm not sure what is possible, but it won't hurt to experiment with a 'custom' ppd (tweaking the relevant parameters) I guess. Sorry I can't be of more specific help here.

No Worries Ferrari, you have been plenty of help. Thanks for your time.

Just in case this is of interest to you...
http://openprinting.blogspot.co.nz/2...with-cups.html

If you can get a slightly-scaled PDF to print in an acceptable manner, it might be practical to have users 'print to file' and saved to a particular shared directory, with a script watching the directory, ready to process these as print jobs with the required lp command options. Just a thought.