Solaris 10 + Network PCL printers.

Dox Systems - Brian · 01-22-2007, 03:52 PM

Any good solutions on printing to PCL printers (networked) from Solaris 10? The built in print manager lets me select the correct type printer, but the output doesn't ever show up at the printer. If I set it up with lpadmin, the output goes to the printer fine, but it shows up as PostScript!

stress_junkie · 01-23-2007, 08:54 AM

If your printer is a Hewlett Packard then you can download and run the HP drivers and print management software. If you had provided the printer make and model I could probably have given you the exact web page to find the software. It's not difficult to find. Just go to hp.com and click on the "Software & Driver Download" link.

Dox Systems - Brian · 01-23-2007, 03:36 PM

Well, it's actually a piece of Ricoh equipment that's PCL-5e/PCL-6 compatible. I'll have to check and see if the HP licensing agreement would let me use their software with a non-HP, but PCL licensed printer!

In other news, I found out that ghostscript is bundled with Solaris... That's a possibility, but I'm not too fond of hacking together printer queues that way.

stress_junkie · 01-23-2007, 04:18 PM

I went to the Ricoh web page, as you probably did as well. I found one PCL 5E/PCL 6 driver for one printer, the Aficio 220/270. Unfortunately, even if this printer is correct they only have drivers for Microsoft and Macintosh.

Dox Systems - Brian · 01-24-2007, 01:34 PM

Well, I've got the method on hacking the interfaces script down to a science now. It's one of those things that upgrades will probably break, but I'm carefully documenting it for the next guy so he won't have to struggle through the way I have!

Now, if only I could get IPP working so I could send pxlcolor to my local PhotoSmart printer!

jlliagre · 01-24-2007, 02:14 PM

May be an advice arriving too late, but you may find simpler to use cups from blastwave to manage printing on Solaris 10.

Dox Systems - Brian · 01-25-2007, 08:54 AM

I did consider using cups, but my history with cups on Linux is not so good

Another deciding factor is that I like to use built-in software rather than add-ons unless there's a fairly significant advantage to adding on. Seems like that leads to less system breakages during upgrades over time. Thanks for the suggestion though, they're always welcome!

bigearsbilly · 08-27-2007, 05:39 PM

this works for me with a lexmark colour laser,
no cups, no nothing.

printers.conf

Code:

#
#       If you hand edit this file, comments ...change.
#       The preferred method of modifying this ... the use of
#       lpset(1M)
#
_default:\
        :use=lexmark:

lexmark:\
        :bsdaddr=192.168.1.38: