Re: [tlug] Does Mac still use cups?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

nigel barker writes:

 > but they only need to run cups as a client, don't they?

Buwhahaha.  Sorry, CUPS doesn't work that way.  It can probably be
operated that way, but good luck if that's what you want to do.
You'll have a revolution on your hands if you ask users to specify
ports and IP addresses, or Unix /dev paths, every time they want to
print to a non-default printer.

Let's think about what we're looking at a for a second.  It's system
that is intended to automatically discover and manage peripherals
attached to arbitrary nodes of the network.  Some of them may be
powered off at any given time but still usable.  Local programs that
want to print should not have to wait on network outages any more than
they should have to wait on a current job printing the Bible in
Tagalog.  New ones may be attached, or old ones removed at arbitrary
nodes at any time.  This is non-trivial, I think you'll admit.

So what CUPS basically does is establish a P2P network of hosts on the
network.  Users with printers ask CUPS to discover local printers,
then tell it whether it's allowed to announce those printers on the
network, and to whom (FVO "whom" that can be specified as CIDR specs).
Users who want to print optionally ask CUPS to discover printers
(since printers probably change only occasionally, the user's favorite
printers are probably already cached locally), then select from those
available.  CUPS handles the nitty-gritty under the hood.

 > > If it's running, visit http://localhost:631/ and see what happens.
 > 
 > Tried that and got nothing. That's what makes me ask this question.
 > So you think I should try and start cups. How do you do that on a Mac
 > /etc/init.d/cups start
 > or is that wishful thinking on my part?

If you only have a couple to do, or if you can spread this task out
over time or delegate to users, as Shawn said, I'm sure you can
configure this in the Printers screen of System Preferences.

If you have to do lots of these or generally would prefer a CLI, learn
about launchctl(1).  (Sorry, no recipes, I only handle a couple of
Macs so the GUI is acceptable to me.)