Adding a printer in FreeBSD

Posted: June 7th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: FreeBSD | Tags: , , | No Comments »

To add a line printer in FreeBSD, you need following:

1) lpd daemon should be enabled and running.

lpd(8) is the print spooler. It accepts printing jobs and sends them to printers defined in /etc/printcap

=> to enable, add following entry in /etc/rc.conf
lpd_enable=”YES”

This entry will start lpd on next reboot.
You can also start it manually:
# lpd

=> make sure its running
# ps awwux | grep lpd
root 1525 0.0 0.0 10072 1620 ?? Is Wed11AM 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/lpd

2) Update /etc/printcap file with printer details:

For example, if printer name is “holi” and it’s sitting at holi.example.com,

lp|holi|holi laser printer:\
:[email protected]:\
:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:\
:sh:

You can also setup different filters.

Look up “man printcap” for the details.