[cups] lpadmin vs. /etc/cups/lpoptions
Michael Sweet
msweet at apple.com
Fri Jan 22 08:08:29 PST 2016
Arney,
> On Jan 22, 2016, at 6:57 AM, Arney <dev-cups.org at arney.de> wrote:
> ...
> Questions:
> 1) A little experimentation indicates, that the settings in /etc/cups/lpoptions will have precedence before everything set using lpadmin. Is that true?
Locally, yes.
The order of precedence is:
System Preferences (on OS X)
~/.cups/lpoptions (lpoptions as normal user)
/etc/cups/lpoptions (lpoptions as root)
/etc/cups/ppd/printername.ppd and
/etc/cups/{classes,printers}.conf (lpadmin stuff)
> 2) Is /etc/cups/lpoptions the preferred way to set system-wide defaults?
Generally, no. Those options only apply to locally-submitted jobs.
> 3) How come there are these two ways? Historical reasons?
There are actually 3 ways (4 on OS X...), and this has evolved out of use cases that predate CUPS.
Basically, there are options you want to apply for all users of a queue (including remote users) - this includes installable options in PPD files.
Then there are options you want to apply for all users of a queue on a particular system.
Then there are options that the user saves for their own print jobs to a queue.
Then (on OS X) there are options managed through the system preferences utility - the system-wide default media size, the "last used settings" for each queue, and whether to default to a particular printer or use the last used queue on the current network.
_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer
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