CUPS

I read documentation about CUPS but I still don't really get the hang of it.

I go to localhost:631 in my browser:
To add a printer I must fill in the name, location and description of the
printer. But I'm not sure what these values should be.
I'm a bit confused with the notion of the CUPS server I think. My printer is
connected directly to the router, so how do my CUPS server and router on
one hand and my CUPS client en CUPS server on the other hand communicate
with eachother. I don't mind a bit of reading but I can't distill this
information from the various documentation pages.

In article <41913a1c$0$32273$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Lieven <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
> I read documentation about CUPS but I still don't really get the hang of it.
>
> I go to localhost:631 in my browser:
> To add a printer I must fill in the name, location and description of the
> printer. But I'm not sure what these values should be.

The name is what the printer will be called. For instance, if the name is
"epson", you'd print to the printer from the command line like this:

lpr -Pepson foo.ps

The location and description strings are purely descriptive; they're
associated with the printer's entry in the CUPS configuration Web page,
and I believe they're passed to certain CUPS-aware clients, which may
choose to show the field to users. Otherwise, they aren't really used for
anything, AFAIK.

> I'm a bit confused with the notion of the CUPS server I think. My printer is
> connected directly to the router, so how do my CUPS server and router on
> one hand and my CUPS client en CUPS server on the other hand communicate
> with eachother. I don't mind a bit of reading but I can't distill this
> information from the various documentation pages.

From your description, I'll assume you've got a router with a built-in
print server. It's the print server side of the device that handles the
printer; the fact that the box is also a router is irrelevant to this
matter.

In any event, when you configure CUPS, you'll tell it to use a network
printer, specifying a protocol that your print server box supports.
(Chances are it supports SMB/CIFS and/or LPD, but you'll have to check
its documentation to be sure. There's a remote chance it supports
something proprietary, in which case you'll have to do some more research
and maybe even replace your hardware.) Thereafter, when a local Linux
program prints, it either calls CUPS directly or uses another program
(like lpr) to do so. CUPS then has the file to be printed and, under most
circumstances, passes it through various programs to convert it to a
format the printer can understand. Once that's done, CUPS sends the file
to the print server using whatever protocol you configured when you set
up the queue. The print server then sends the print job down the line to
the printer.

--
Rod Smith, (E-Mail Removed)
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking