Setting Up A Printer - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual

23.4 Setting Up a Printer

YaST can be used to configure a local printer that is directly connected to your machine
(normally with USB or parallel port) or to set up printing over the network. It is also
possible to add PPD (PostScript Printer Description) files for your printer with YaST.
23.4.1 Configuring Local Printers
If an unconfigured local printer is detected, YaST starts automatically to configure it.
YaST can configure the printer automatically if the parallel or USB port can be set up
automatically and the connected printer can be detected. The printer model must also
be listed in the database used during the automatic hardware detection.
If the printer model is unknown or cannot be automatically detected, configure it man-
ually. There are two possible reasons why a printer is not automatically detected:
• The printer does not identify itself correctly. This may apply to very old devices.
Try to configure your printer as described in Section "Configuring Manually"
(page 443).
• If the manual configuration does not work, communication between printer and
computer is not possible. Check the cable and the plugs to make sure that the
printer is properly connected. If this is the case, the problem may not be printer-
related, but rather a USB or parallel port–related problem.
Configuring Manually
To manually configure the printer, select Hardware > Printer in the YaST control
center. This opens the main Printer Configuration window, where the detected devices
are listed in the upper part. The lower part lists any queues configured so far (refer to
Section 23.1, "The Workflow of the Printing System" (page 441) for more information
about print queues). If no printer was detected, both parts of the configuration window
are empty. Use Edit to change the configuration of a listed printer or Add to set up a
printer not automatically detected. Editing an existing configuration uses the same di-
alogs as in Procedure 23.1, "Adding a Local Printer Manually" (page 444).
In Printer Configuration, you can also Delete an existing entry. Clicking Other opens
a list with advanced options. Select Restart Detection, to manually start the automatic
Printer Operation 443