Network Printing
Book Review

By Dale Farris, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club February 2003 General Overview This book focuses on printing from within a computer network. The reality in today's information age is that the "paperless" office has not, and likely will never come to pass. Important documents are always printed, even if these key files are also electronically shared with others via a network. Ironically, computer networks and the information sharing that has been enabled by these networks have probably led to even more paper. Printing is a critical service in all computer networks. Just have a printer fail to properly function, or begin to produce low-quality output and see how fast the IS Help Desk phone lights up. With the current level of network sophistication, this means networked workstation users have the ability to send a file to nearly any printer that has been joined to the network. This has also ended the days of the "sneaker net" as the means of getting the paper document from one point in the network to another. With print and file sharing now well established, connecting users to a network is assumed to also connect them to print services. However, in many enterprises adding users is difficult enough that it is nearly impossible to hire skilled network administration staff quickly enough to keep up with the growing number of network users. Even the most skilled network administrators can easily be swamped if constrained by poor network scalability. To their rescue comes this super book that will help network administrators build scalable print servers. Focus of the Book Printer management has always been a trouble spot for system administrators. It's not unusual to spend half of their time riding shotgun for a herd of uncooperative printers that always have something going wrong. Many printer systems are likely a patchwork that crosses several operating systems, each with its own requirements, such as Unix, Macintosh, and Windows. All these OS's have their own printing systems with different user interfaces and administrative procedures. Certainly, it would be nice if you could use a network to make printing problems more manageable, to more easily share printers, and reduce the administrative overhead of managing printers. This book is designed to help you achieve this goal. Authors Radermacher and Gast help show how to consolidate a printing system using a local network and Unix or Linux based print servers. The result is a unified approach to printing that lets users take advantage of their operating system's native printing interface to access any printer, regardless its location. In addition to helping a user community, a well designed Unix-based network printing system lets you automate administration as much as possible, and makes it easy for you to add new printers or relocate old ones. Key Topics Setting up print servers on Unix (BSD and SVR4) and Linux systems Using filters to extend your printing system LPRng, the next generation spooler for Unix and Linux systems Opening Unix & Linux print servers to Win, Mac, and Novell users Remote printer management using SNMP Using BOOTP and DHCP to configure printers at boot time Using LDAP to centralize configuration management Printer accounting, security, and performance Table of Contents The book is organized into three main sections, including Part 1, The Basics: Unix Queuing, Part 2, Front-End Interfaces to Unix Queues, and Part 3, Administration. The 4th part includes the two appendixes. The twelve (12) chapters include the following titles. Introduction, Architecture, and History Printer Languages Exploring the Spooler Extending the Berkeley Spooler with Print Filters The Next Generation Berkley Spooler: LPRng Connecting Windows to Unix Servers: Let's Samba Connecting Macintosh Networks to Unix Servers Connecting NetWare Networks to Linux Servers Using SNMP to Manage Networked Printers Using Boot Servers for Basic Printer Configuration Centralized Configuration with LDAP Accounting, Security, and Performance The two appendixes include Appendix A, printcap Reference, and Appendix B, SNMP MIB Objects for Managing Printers. Target Readers The focus of this book is on network printing, and is a must have for any information systems administrator or information systems support staff who support computer networks. While the material is clearly written and superbly organized, the material is definitely designed for technically proficient staff, and is not necessarily relevant for those who may be new to computers. Students working on their Microsoft or Novell certification will also want to give this book serious attention, as the content will greatly benefit them in preparing for their certification exams. Book Contents 304 pages; preface; acknowledgments; figures; tables, sample scripts; appendixes; index; cover colophon Authors Todd Radermacher & Matthew Gast About the Authors Todd Radermacher has been working with computer and network technologies for the past 18 years, starting with Systems Programmer and Technologist positions at EG & G, and working with the Sandia, Livermore, and Los Alamos Laboratories. Todd moved into the commercial sector in 1994, and since then has held various technical and managerial positions with Silicon Valley start-up companies, primarily focusing on data security. Matthew Gast was born on the Great Plains of the Midwest, near Chicago. Living on the Great Plains, he could almost see all the way to Iowa, where he later attended Grinnell College. In college, he started two significant long-term relationships. The first is with the fiercely independent Alison Burek, a musician, painter, and Renaissance woman. To the great joy of their two cats, they were married shortly after graduation. The second is with Unix, initially one of Matthew's prime methods of procrastination and later the gateway to network literacy. He uses his home network to experiment with new technologies, and scares away intruders by discussing its architecture. Currently, Matthew is interested in routing, security, cryptography, and mobile communications. He now works at Nokia as a traveling technical wizard and is the resident frequent travel reward program expert. In respites between business trips, Matthew lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with Ali, who is trying to make sure he doesn't grow up before his time, an event she hopes to postpone indefinitely. ISBN October 2000, First Edition 0-596-00038-3 List Price $34.95 $51.95 CAN Publisher Contact Marsee Henon marsee@oreilly.com O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, California 95472 707-827-7000 800-998-9938 FAX 707-829-0104 www.oreilly.com