[Cialug] Multi-tray printer with CUPS

[Zachary Kotlarek]

On Nov 30, 2010, at 2:25 PM, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:

> At work we recently got a new printer. Compared to what we had before, 
> it is quite the beast. It has 6 (yes, six) input trays. The CUPS printer 
> software on my Debian box lets me choose the paper size for the whole 
> printer. But some of the trays have different sizes of paper. Is there a 
> way to tell CUPS the association between input tray and paper size that 
> is loaded in the tray? I haven't found it in the CUPS web GUI, so 
> presumably it will have to be done at the command line. Google searches 
> haven't been successful so far at finding a way to do it, though.



I could be wrong, but AFAIK CUPS doesn't have any concept of "tray X only accepts jobs for paper size Y" -- setting the default paper size for an input slot does not prevent you from sending print jobs with a different size specified. It might influence they way the autoselect magic tray works, or the options presented by GUI apps, but I can't detect any difference in command-line usage, and it certainly doesn't force agreement between default paper size, job paper size, and input slot.

That being said, you can list all the options defined in the PPD with:
	lpoptions -p printer_name -l

It may or may not define a default media type for all input slots. Mine does for the first tray and the MPF slot, but not for the second tray. You should be able to save a default setting any option listed there via the web interface (or directly in the config files, .lpoptions file, etc.)

When you're actually printing the paper size and input slot are both just media options and can be specified independently:
	lpr -o media=Letter,MultiPurpose
You can also save sets of options in a CUPS "printer instance" if you want to quickly select tray2/11x17/color/duplex without changing the defaults for the printer in general.

	Zach

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