[cups.general] CUPS "printer grouping" question with 180 Lexmarks, different locations

[henri]

Hi,

You may want to have a look at PrinterSetup : http://www.lucidsystems.org/printingworks/printersetup

PrinterSetup is a tool which is designed to make this kind of CUPS  
queue management easier.

PrinterSetup has some neat fatures such as dynamic queue updates based  
upon which airport base station your machine is connected. These more  
advanced features are currently only supported on Mac OS X. However,  
the project is licensed under the GNU GPL and as such, if you need a  
more advanced feature you are encouraged to add support for other  
operating systems.

This site which is using PrinterSetup has about 100 printers and  
probably about 250 various cups queues on servers which are managed  
with PrinterSetup. In addition, all the client queues are also managed  
with PrinterSetup.

Hope this helps.

----------
Disclaimer : I am a developer on the PrinterSetup project.



> Hi List
>
> I have the following problem:
>
> We need to manage 180 Lexmark printers with CUPS. Main problem: All
> printers are in one dropdown list, which is way too long. So we're
> looking for a solution to manage them in a usable manner. We have 4
> locations, with mupltiple buildings and with multiple floors. OS is
> Opensolaris, Sunray desktop is Gnome from OSOL.
>
> Main goal is to provide a short list with nearest printers. This  
> will be
> done by "SunRay Followme printing". Problem with that: We need
> additional printers in the list (ie secretery ones, color printer  
> from a
> different floor)
>
> We've got the following possibilities:
>
> x Multiple, hierarchical CUPS servers
> x A GUI from which users may klick together a printing profile for
> themselves, with the needed printers.
>
> My question to the list: How this is done? The CUPS groups feature
> doesn't help in this case. Does anyone has experience with this?
>
> Every input on this question is greatly appreciated.
>
> Tom
>