13.3. Creating a printer share

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

Fig. 13.1 Creating a printer share

When adding/deleting/editing a printer share, the printer is automatically configured in CUPS. CUPS does not have an LDAP interface for printer configuration, instead the printers.conf file is generated via a listener module. If Samba is used, the printer shares are also automatically provided for Windows clients.

13.3.1. Printers UMC module - General tab

Table 13.1 General tab

Attribute	Description
Name (*)	This input field contains the name of the printer share, which is used by CUPS. The printer 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 print server manages the printer queue for the printers to be shared. It converts the data to be printed into a compatible print format when this is necessary. If the printer is not ready, the print server saves the print jobs temporarily and forwards them on to the printer subsequently. If more than one print server is specified, the print job from the client will be sent to the first print server to become available. Only UCS Directory Node and Managed Nodes on which the univention-printserver package is installed are displayed in the list.
Protocol and Destination (*)	These two input fields specify how the print server accesses the printer. The following list describes the syntax of the individual protocols for the configuration of printers connected locally to the server: parallel://devicefile Example: parallel://dev/lp0 socket://server:port Example: socket://printer_03:9100 usb://devicefile Example: usb://dev/usb/lp0 The following list describes the syntax of the individual protocols for the configuration of network printers: http://server[:port]/path Example: http://192.0.2.10:631/printers/remote ipp://server/printers/queue Example: ipp://printer_01/printers/xerox lpd://server/queue Example: lpd://192.0.2.30/bwdraft The cups-pdf protocol is used for integrating a pseudo printer, which creates a PDF document from all the print jobs. The setup is documented in Generating PDF documents from print jobs. The file:/ protocol expects a filename as a target. The print job is then not sent to the printer, but instead written in this file, which can be useful for test purposes. The file is rewritten with every print job. The smb:// protocol can be used to mount a Windows print share. For example, to integrate the laser01 printer share from Windows system win01, win01/laser01 must be specified as destination. The manufacturer and model must be selected according to the printer in question. The print server uses the printer model settings to convert the print jobs where necessary and send these directly to the URI smb://win01/laser01. No Windows drivers are used in this. Independent of these settings, the printer share can be mounted by other Windows systems with the corresponding printer drivers.
Manufacturer	When the printer manufacturer is selected, the Printer model selection list updates automatically.
Printer model (*)	This selection list shows all the printers PPD files available for the selected manufacturer. If the required printer model is not there, a similar model can be selected and a test print used to establish correct function. Integrating additional PPD files explains how to expand the list of printer models.
Samba name	A printer can also be assigned an additional name by which it can be 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 was already in use in Windows under a name which contains blank spaces or umlauts. The printer can then still be reached under this name without the need to reconfigure the Windows computers.
Location	This data is displayed by some applications when selecting the printer. It can be filled with any text.
Description	This is displayed by some applications when selecting the printer. It can be filled with any text.

13.3.2. Printers UMC module - Access control tab

Table 13.2 Access control tab

Attribute	Description
Access control	Access rights for the printer can be specified here. Access can be limited to certain groups or users or generally allowed and certain groups or users blocked specifically. As standard, access is available for all groups and users. These rights are also adopted for the corresponding Samba printer shares, so that the same access rights apply when printing via Samba as when printing directly via CUPS. This access control is useful for the management of printers spread across several locations, so that the users at location A do not see the printers of location B.
Allowed/denied users	This lists individual users for whom access should be controlled.
Allowed/denied groups	This lists individual groups for whom access should be controlled.