CUPS provides a portable printing layer for UNIX®-based operating systems. It has been developed by Easy Software Products to promote a standard printing solution for all UNIX vendors and users. CUPS provides the System V and Berkeley command-line interfaces.
cups-1.1.19: description + notes
CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) as the basis for managing print jobs and queues. The Line Printer Daemon (LPD), Server Message Block (SMB), and AppSocket (a.k.a. JetDirect) protocols are also supported with reduced functionality. CUPS adds network printer browsing and PostScript Printer Description (PPD) based printing options to support real-world printing under UNIX.
Once you have installed the software you can access the documentation (and a bunch of other stuff) on-line at:
If you're having trouble getting that far, the documentation is located in the "http://localhost:631//usr/freeware/share/doc/cups" directory.Please note: If you wish to support a non-PostScript printer you must install
fw_ghostscript.Drivers for thousands of printers are provided by ESP Print Pro software.
CUPS is licensed under the GNU General Public License and GNU Library General Public License. Please contact Easy Software Products for commercial support and binary distribution rights.
CUPS and IRIX spooling systems
CUPS will install a new printer spooling system which is intended to replace the one provided normally with IRIX. The two spooling systems have many utilities with the same name (i.e., lpstat, lp, lpadmin, etc), which have similar or same syntax, but that can speak only to their respective spooler daemon. For this reason, even if it is theoretically possible to have the two spooling systems running at the same time, we do not recommend this configuration.
This version of CUPS features integration with the standard IRIX desktop tools. You can use the PrintStatus and PrintPanel desktop applications with CUPS printers in the same way you are used to with IRIX printers. However, printer administration and changes of printer settings must be done using the CUPS administrative commands via the CUPS web interface or the CUPS command line interface (or a CUPS compatible application, like xpp, the X Printing Panel). Do not attempt to create or remove CUPS printers using the IRIX printer manager utility, or one of the IRIX printer installation scripts like, for example,
/usr/sbin/mkcentpr(1M). If you have printers already defined in the IRIX spooling system and want to install CUPS, we suggest that you remove them and reinstall the printers under CUPS.Even if CUPS is intended as a printer spooler replacement, by default it doesn't uninstall or replace any IRIX standard binary (in fact, it installs completely under the
/usr/freewaredirectory tree). However, if you have installed on your system the IRIX System V spooling system (print.sw.spooler) or the IRIX BSD lpr spooling system (print.sw.bsdlpr), you must be sure that the CUPS utilities are found in everyone's search path before the corresponding IRIX ones. Depending on your site policy, the above can be met in various ways, for example by putting/usr/freeware/binand/usr/freeware/sbin(the directories where CUPS binaries are installed) as the first entries in your system global search path.Finally, while CUPS does not need any component of the IRIX System V spooling system to work, it writes some status files needed by the IRIX desktop tools inside the IRIX System V spooling directory (
/var/spool/lp). If this directory and its content are removed or get corrupted, you will have to run/usr/freeware/etc/cups/fix-spool-diras root and restart the CUPS spooler daemon.
Special thanks to Andrea Suatoni (a.suatoni@telefonica.net) for helping port this package to IRIX.
To auto-install this package, go back and click on the respective install icon.