13.4. Creating a printer group

CUPS offers the possibility to group printers into classes. These are implemented in UCS as printer groups. Printer groups appear to clients as normal printers. The aim of such a printer group is to create a higher availability of printer services. If the printer group is used to print, the job is sent to the first printer in the printer group to become available. The printers are selected based on the round robin principle so that the degree of utilization is kept uniform.

A printer group must have at least one printer as a member. Only printers from the same server can be members of the group.

Caution

The possibility of grouping printers shares from different printer servers in a printer group makes it possible to select printer groups as members of a printer group. This could result in a printer group adopting itself as a group member. This must not be allowed to happen.

Printer groups are administrated in the UMC module Printers with the Printer share object type (see Univention Management Console modules).

Table 13.3 General tab

Attribute	Description
Name (*)	This input field contains the names of the printer group share, which is used by CUPS. The printer group appears under this name in Linux and Windows. The name may contain alphanumeric characters (i.e., uppercase and lowercase letters a to z and numbers 0 to 9) as well as hyphens and underscores. Other characters (including blank spaces) are not permitted.
Print server (*)	A range of print servers (spoolers) can be specified here to expand the list of printers available for selection. Printers which are assigned to the servers specified here can then be adopted in the Group members list from the selection arranged below them.
Samba name	A printer group can also be assigned an additional name by which it can reached from Windows. Unlike the CUPS name (see Name), the Samba name may contain blank spaces and umlauts. The printer is then available to Windows under both the CUPS name and the Samba name. Using a Samba name in addition to the CUPS name is practical, for example, if the printer group was already in use in Windows under a name which contains blank spaces or umlauts. The printer group can then still be reached under this name without the need to reconfigure the Windows computers.
Group members	This list is used to assign printers to the printer group.