Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Printer burst page in Ubuntu

In Ubuntu 'hoary' it appears that it isn't possible to set up a printer separator (sometimes called a burst page or Job Sheet) for a CUPs print queue. The Ubuntu print gui, (System->Administration->Printing) just doesn't expose that option. Usually it can be set in though the web interface to CUPs (localhost:631), but that is disabled.

To enable a JobSheet, edit the file /etc/cups/printers.conf to look
something like this:


# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.23
# Written by cupsd on Thu Aug 4 11:03:47 2005
<defaultprinter LaserJet-9000>
Info LaserJet-9000
DeviceURI socket://zko03018.americas.cpqcorp.net:9100
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets unclassified none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</defaultprinter>



The unclassified refers to a file in /usr/share/cups/banners/ that is just a chunk of PostScript that gets prepended to the print jobs. If you feel like hacking PostScript, you can create your own burst page.