Restricting use of a colour printer toblack-and-white

[Brett Ussher]

I just recently did this.  I took a color PPD file and looked through it for awhile.  How I figured out what was a color printer setting and what was black and white was by looking at how the driver option settings appeared in the CUPS admin.  In the settings you can set a printer to print just black and white, of course, but I wanted it to be the only option.  By looking at all the other color option names and searching for them in the PPD I was able to successfully delete all of the color settings and leave only the black and white with composite black (grayscale) and then set those options to the default setting for the driver.

The key is to keep an original copy of the PPD so that if you mess in editing it, you're not out of luck.  But, all in all, it only took me about 30 minutes to figure out what to delete from the file and I've never opened a PPD before.

Brett

> >
> > There may also be other ways to alter the PPD to make it black and
> > white only. I am not a post script master but I have seen some of
> > these people at work.
> >
> > Having two queues available to the clients is a good idea. It is very
> > simple protection.
> >
> > If the users have administration control over their machines or are
> > able to add print queues and you require greater security then
> > PrintAgent : http://www.lucidsystems.org/pringingworks/printagent is
> > able to authenticate specific users to a CUPS queue. PrintAgent is
> > also able to interface with various directory systems for password
> > credentials so that people will be granted or denied access based upon
> > group membership for instance.
> >
> > This kind of approach allows both queues to be installed on a single
> > machine but will only allow someone who is allowed to print to print
> > to the color queue.
> >
> > Finally if the clients are *NIX based then, PrinterSetup is able to
> > dynamically alter the queues based upon the user who is logging onto
> > the system. So if a user is a certain group then they will have both
> > color and black and white queues available in the print dialog box.
> > Details on PrinterSetup is available from : http://www.lucidsystems.org/printingworks/printagent/
> >
> > I hope this helps.
>
> Thank you, Henri. PrintAgent is new to me and sounds to be worth investigating - even for uses other than the specific one I asked about.
>
> John A. Murdie