Kickstart installations and printer pre-configuration in Fedora 13

[Peter Schwenk]

Hello:

In my department, we have a lot of Linux (CentOS and Fedora) workstations.  I set them up using Red Hat's kickstart method.  With CentOS and earlier versions of Fedora, my kickstart post-install script used a bunch of lpadmin commands to preconfigure the printer queues for my users.  With Fedora 13's new "automated" printer setup system, my lpadmin commands no longer work.  I believe it's because the printer drivers are not installed by default, so the lpadmin commands fail due to missing drivers.

I was wondering if someone could describe the correct way of preconfiguring network printer queues via a script.  I don't want my users to have to set up their own printers.  Thanks in advance for your help.

--
Peter Schwenk  ||  Campus IT Associate 3
Mathematical Sciences  ||  University of Delaware
Newark, DE  19716-2553  ||  [phone] (v)
schwenk @ math . udel . edu  ||  http://www.math.udel.edu/~schwenk

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

Peter Schwenk  writes:
> I was wondering if someone could describe the correct way of
> preconfiguring network printer queues via a script.  I don't want my
> users to have to set up their own printers.  Thanks in advance for
> your help.

I'd like to know what the approved way is too.  Setting up cups seems
like one of the grottier aspects of running a handful of identical
Fedora systems on a network.

So far I've been hacking it via "scp -p" from a preconfigured and
working system. I update:

/etc/printcap
  /etc/cups/*  (anything with a mod-time after I installed the system).

Hopefully someone will be disgusted enough with this answser to speak up
and tell us the correct way. ;-)

-wolfgang

[Peter Schwenk]

Thanks for the reply.

On Sep 5, 2010, at 7:49 PM, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
> Peter Schwenk  writes:
> > I was wondering if someone could describe the correct way of
> > preconfiguring network printer queues via a script.  I don't want my
> > users to have to set up their own printers.  Thanks in advance for
> > your help.
>
> I'd like to know what the approved way is too.  Setting up cups seems
> like one of the grottier aspects of running a handful of identical
> Fedora systems on a network.
>
> So far I've been hacking it via "scp -p" from a preconfigured and
> working system. I update:
>
> /etc/printcap
>  /etc/cups/*  (anything with a mod-time after I installed the system).

After I posted my question, I decided to try just copying over the /etc/cups directory of a correctly configured computer to another computer and restarting CUPS.  It seems to work fine.  All I need to do is run lpadmin to set the appropriate default printer for the machine.  I guess I just wasn't certain if there were any other files that play a role in printer configuration.  I didn't think of /etc/printcap.  I guess I'll throw that one in, too.
> Hopefully someone will be disgusted enough with this answser to speak up
> and tell us the correct way. ;-)
> -wolfgang
>
> Wolfgang S. Rupprecht      http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/      (IPv6-only)

--
Peter Schwenk  ||  Campus IT Associate 3
Mathematical Sciences  ||  University of Delaware
Newark, DE  19716-2553  ||  [phone] (v)
schwenk @ math . udel . edu  ||  http://www.math.udel.edu/~schwenk