[cups] Instructions for installing /printers/<queue name>.ppd-based printer on Windows?

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 3:35 PM Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Jul 2015 17:22:28 +0000, Michael Mol stated:
>
> > I have a scenario where the manufacturer's native Windows drivers are
> buggy
> > and causing headaches, and all my Linux clients seem to be able to print
> to
> > the same model of printer natively just fine using CUPS.
>
> Have you tired:
>
> 1) Contacting the printer manufacturer and seeing if there is a newer
> driver
> available?
>

It's an HP consumer-grade printer. I have, in fact, contacted HP support
regarding this model, and they've lied through their teeth (telling me you
couldn't monitor consumables via SNMP without their software...you can, and
I am. I even wrote a Zabbix template for the purpose.) to me before.

But, yes, the driver is up-to-date.


>
> 2) Removing the present driver and re-installing it?
>
> If you had actually mentioned the printer, model; number and the driver you
> are having problems with, it would make solving your problem easier.
>

I've had enough ongoing driver issues with HP printers that I'm actively
looking for solutions that don't require the Windows form of their drivers,
and I'm actively looking for solutions that let me use CUPS as a print
server so I can actually get some visibility into problems as they happen.
The Windows event log tells me next to nothing using HP's drivers, so if I
can marshal jobs through something I can peer into, that will help me
greatly going forward. And from a general administration perspective,
having HP's Windows drivers, and HP's updater, on Windows is just more
potentially-vulnerable, unsandboxable code running on my client machines.

I'm honestly not looking for support for this particular printer, how to
get a Windows client to talk directly to it, or how to get a Windows client
to talk to it through a raw queue; I know that CUPs talks to the printer
perfectly well with the aid of hplip, and I know that CUPS exposes the
printer's full capabilities--at least to the degree I care about, so I'm
looking into how to use CUPS' provided PPD file to extend Windows' native
PostScrip support to handle the printer's full capabilities. That's what
PPD files are for, after all...