Printing Updates
- Posted by Frank Pari
- on May 15, 2018
As some of you may already know, the internal print servers have been upgraded to Debian stretch. This upgrade was long overdue and certainly not the easiest upgrade I've encounted. But, the payoff was well worth the effort.
Windows users should be aware that they have their own printer names, which end in "_windows". These are special queues designed to work with how Windows expects the queue to act. Linux and Mac users can use the standard printers, as expected.
Instructions for using one of the special printers from Windows can be found here: https://cs.brown.edu/about/system/services/printing/windows-instruction.
General printing instructions can be found here: http://cs.brown.edu/about/system/services/printing/
As of now, there are still some bugs in the communications between the printer, printer server and client that may result in the status of a printer being mis-represented. We're working on this, but it seems to be a bug in the cups printing system and how it makes use of hplip to communicate with the printers. Though, incorrect printer statuses have been rare.
The other discovery that was made during this process is that there seem to be a number of machines re-sharing our printers to others. Unfortunately, these shares do not seem to work properly and should be avoided when attempting to print through a Tstaff managed printer.
For users with ITSC managed hosts, please contact your ITSC rep for any printing assistance you may need. All others should email problem@cs.brown.edu with any questions or concerns.