Ricoh AP2610 Printer Configuration - Page 3

Ricoh Printer Configuration on CUPS 1. Introduction Although UNIX has been around for many years its printing system has not changed very much. Most UNIX printing systems are still based on the Line Print Daemon Protocol (LPD) for remote printing. This protocol is widely accepted due to its simplicity and ease of implementation, but with the advancement in printing technology it has reached its limits and cannot support more sophisticated requirements such as security and access control. The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) was developed to answer this limitation and to provide a common platform for printing. The Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), the protocol on which CUPS is based, allows for more interaction between hosts, print servers and print devices by utilizing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as a means of communication. With this setup, a growing number of features can be easily implemented by defining new sets of operations. With the IPP protocol, jobs can be sent locally or remotely over the Internet regardless of the location so long as it is accessible through HTTP. CUPS is a robust in printing system loaded with great features. These include printer classes, access control, built-in backend modules, web-based configuration and Application Programming Interface (API). Printer classes provide the ability to group printers such that jobs sent to a class are forwarded to the first available member of that class. This improves the availability of printer resources and avoids downtime if one of the printers is unavailable or goes offline. To maintain compatibility with both System V and Berkeley style of printing, CUPS provides support for both lp and lpr print commands in addition to the other utilities. It also includes limited support for LPD client by providing its own LPD daemon. This paper illustrates how to configure a Ricoh printer or multifunction device (MFD) on CUPS. The installation process only covers driver setup on devices with the Postscript option enabled. To learn more on how to setup non-Postscript devices, refer to the CUPS documentations listed in the References section. Several installation procedures using different tools are covered in this paper using both screenshots and command line interface to describe the process. Linux is used as the operating system in this paper. If another UNIX-flavored platform is used, the same procedures should apply so long as the same tool exists on that platform. This paper does not cover the implementation of CUPS and its Application Programming Interface (API). The CUPS book by Michael Sweet, listed in the References section, is recommended to readers interested in this area. Page 3 of 30 Visit our knowledgebase at: http://www.ricoh-usa.com/support/knowledgebase.asp Copyright 2003 Ricoh Corporation