CONCISE ANNOUNCEMENT:
I've made a few updates I wanted to inform people about briefly:
- Anchor now has the HP Black&White Laser printer configured and working as the DEFAULT printer. (The colour printer remains available but is not default any longer)
- SunRay thin client server inherits new printer settings from anchor
- SunRay thin client server now has "AbiWord" installed; a small fast and highly usable (free, cross-platform) word-processing application. Lots of great features, nice interface, no bloat.
MORE DETAILS:
PRINTING:
Anchor is acting as a central printer server, running "CUPS" printer management software. This integrates very easily with linux systems in particular, and allows centralized tracking of print jobs, deleting unwanted jobs from the queue, monitoring jobs presently holding up the queue, etc.
To check the status of print queue jobs, take a look at the web page,
http://anchor.phys.ocean.dal.ca:631/jobs/
Please note this web-interface is only accessible to computers inside the POLAN subnet. (ie, computers with an IP of 129.173.23.X; machines on UCIS subnets or "the internet at large" will NOT have access).
Please contact TDC if your solaris workstation needs printing to PO or RB setup. This is now workable as of Nov-27-07, but does require manual configuration.
Effective Nov-27-07, the shorter "rb" name has been restored for the colour laser printer. Thus, a sample print command with the colour laser might be,
lp -d rb ~homedir/postscript-file.eps
To control duplex (on or off) on command line, for either the "rb" or "po" printer queue, you can use syntax thus:
to force duplex, add the -o flag as follows: lp -d po -o sides=two-sided-long-edge ~homedir/postscript-file.eps or to force no-duplex, lp -d po o sides=one-sided ~homedir/postscript-file.eps
"GUI Applications" such as Firefox, openoffice, etc. will all list the 2 printers "automagically" in the printer dialog, so it is easy to choose which printer you want for such applications.
ABIWORD - Word Processor on the ThinClient-SunRay Server:
Abiword has been installed on the thin client server. You can run this free, cross-platform software on any (Linux, Mac OS_X, Windows) platform computer. It provides a nice interface, lots of useful features and none of the bloat or annoyances that "other popular wordprocessors" have made "so normal for so many". You can learn more from the web site, http://www.abisource.com/. Once you get hooked, install it on all your computers and tell all your friends about it too :-)