Configuring OpenSolaris: Printing – Brother 7820N

Install the Printer

Setting up your printer in OpenSolaris can be a trick, if your drivers aren’t yet included.

1. The place to start is in: System | Administration | Print Manager
2. Click “Add Printer” button and get to work
3. If your printer isn’t available try getting a driver from one of these places:
   • http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting
   • http://www.cups.org/index.php
4. You need to get a valid *.ppd or *.ppd.gz file for your printer.
5. Close the Print Manager GUI for now.
6. As ROOT type:
# ppdmgr -a path_to_.ppd -w
# ppdmgr -u
7. Reopen the Print Manager GUI and you should be able to find your driver.
8. Best of luck, that should make your printer happy!

Remove the Banner

To remove the ‘banner page’ that prints every time is easy:

1. Click: System | Administration | Solaris LP Print Manager
2. I just click ‘cancel’ on the first dialog box that pops up…
3. Select your printer and click: Printer | Modify Printer Properties
4. Under “Banner” select: Never Print Baner
5. ‘Apply’, ‘Ok’, Good-2-Go.

Default to Letter-Size

How? (possibly feature not implemented yet)

Print Source Code with: printcpp

Here’s an awesome hack handed down from my former Professor and UNIX Zen-Master. This simple alias prints nicely formatted plain-text files from the command-line with normal ‘C/C++ style’ source-code syntax-highlighting. It’s also great for printing any text file in a hurry.

The first one is ‘portrait’ mode and the second is ‘landscape’ mode. You may have to tweak a little if your porting to a different UNIX/LINUX system, but I’ve always gotten it to work!

1. See my prior post about installing more IPS repos!
2. From IPS, select the ‘SunFreeware’ repo, possibly marked ‘Companion’ or ‘SFW’
3. Grab the GNU “Enscrip”‘ package.
4. Add some code to your .bashrc or .bash_aliases:
   
alias printcpp='enscript -M Letter -G -i 2 -f Courier8 -Ecpp -P myPrinterName'
alias printcpp2='enscript -M Letter -r -G -i 2 -f Courier8 -Ecpp -P myPrinterName'

5. Pay-attention and be sure to substitute YOUR printer name for “myPrinterName”.
6. $ source ~/.bashrc