The World of Solaris Printing Solaris Printing

Following the release of multiple printing patches in the recent past, it is worth knowing that all Solaris 10 printing fixes are now included in one umbrella patch per architecture. The ids of these patches get regenerated with each Solaris 10 update release with the current (Solaris 10 11/08) versions being:

 138627-07 SunOS 5.10: printing patch

138627-07 SunOS 5.10_x86: printing patch

 In an on-going effort to provide solutions to printing issues while patches are in the creation process (which can take a number of weeks), contract customers can receive interim diagnostic relief (IDR) for individual fixes. Multiple fixes are also delivered via "combined IDRs". These are made available around the time of a Solaris update release with the next versions expected late April/early May 2009.

For help and information on general Solaris 10 printing use, see the main documentation page at:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-7355

Solaris 10 5/08 (and the corresponding patches 127127-11 and 127128-11) introduced some new printing features which probably haven't made the headlines as much as they might. For example, Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) Client-Side Support now offers the option to use the more fully-featured IPP protocol for client/server communications rather than the traditional BSD/LPD/RFC1179 protocol. This also enables communication with a multitude of other print servers out there which support the protocol.

Other features introduced at the same time are documented at:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0547/gghpo?a=view

and include:

• PPD File Management Utility
• Selectable Use of localhost for Solaris Print Server Database Hostname
• PAPI Print Commands replace several commonly used print commands

Unfortunately this latter addition, which introduced new versions of the Solaris print commands (lp, lpstat, etc.) designed to use the Print API (PAPI), also introduced a number of undesirable changes in the behaviour of the commands. The good news is that most of these have already been resolved either by fully released patches or by means of interim relief given while official patches are still going through their full process.

For full details of the issues mentioned above, there are two SunAlerts which cover those already resolved via patches:

Multiple Printing Regressions in Solaris 10 Kernel Patches 127127-11 and 127128-11
Document ID: 241426  Dec 12, 2008  PUBLIC  Sun Alert

  http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-66-241426-1

and those with fixes available via interim relief (contact your support representative if access is required)

Part II - Multiple Printing Regressions in Solaris 10 Kernel Patches 127127-11 and 127128-11
Document ID: 247386  Dec 10, 2008  PUBLIC  Sun Alert

  http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-66-247386-1

A new blog has arrived to bring together the latest news and information from the world of Solaris printing covering all current releases. This blog has not quite reached the teething stage yet but will include entries relating to anything to do with printing from Solaris (somewhat unsurprisingly)

More soon...