Configure a cups-pdf printer on Cups and use it on AIX
I will briefly describe how to set a cups-pdf on cups on Linux and configure AIX to use it. It is an easy task.
- Install on Linux cups and cups-pdf (for SucksE (Suse) you can find it in openSuse repositories).
The cups-pdf package configures automaticly a printer called "cups-pdf"
You can access the CUPS configuration page via http://localhost:631. If it is in a remote server, you can forward the port via SSH: "ssh -R 6310:localhost:631 host" and access via http://localhost:631.
To use it on AIX, you need to configure the LPD protocol enabling cups-lpd in xinetd: On suse you must enable it in /etc/xinetd.d/cups-lpd.NOTE: You must disable the usage of banners (added by default by cups-lpd when converting from lpd to ipp) or you will get always a file called "Test_Page.pdf" with only the banner. I think that newer versions of cups solve this problem. To do that, you must add to cups-lpd the option -o job-sheets=none
sed 's/(disable.=)./\1 no/' -i /etc/xinetd.d/cups-lpd
grep -q job-sheets=none /etc/xinetd.d/cups-lpd || sed 's/(server_args.=.)/\1 -o job-sheets=none/' -i /etc/xinetd.d/cups-lpd /etc/init.d/xinetd reload
Finally on AIX, you can create you new printer as a BSD printer:
/usr/lib/lpd/pio/etc/piomisc_ext mkpq_remote_ext -q 'cups-pdf' -h 'remoteserver' -r 'cups-pdf' -t 'bsd' -C 'FALSE' -d 'Virtual PDF printer on remoteserver'
That is all. You can use your virtual pdf printer on AIX: ls | lp -d cups-pdf
You may want tune some cups-pdf settings in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf, like:
UserUMask 0007: This option affects the "umask" default ACL configuration. If you set 0077 it will set umask=--- in final PDF, I do not known why :?
Key: UserUMask
umask for user output of known users
changing this can introduce security leaks if confidential
information is processed!
Default: 0077
UserUMask 0007
Label 1, to avoid overwrites...
Key: Label
label all jobs with a unique job-id in order to avoid overwriting old
files in case new ones with identical names are created; always true for
untitled documents
0: label untitled documents only, 1: label all documents
Default: 0
Paths, etc....