cups

puppet-cups module

User Guide

Overview

This type provides the ability to manage cups printers and options.

Limitations:

• It currently does not support classes.
• It currently does not set default printers.
• It does not set vendor ppd options (where an external process is responsible for modifying the ppd).

Installation

This module should be cloned or otherwise copied into your modulepath.

If you are not sure where your module path is try this command:

puppet --configprint modulepath

This module provides new types in the form of plugins, so your Puppet configuration (ie. puppet.conf) must include a pluginsync directive like this:

[agent]
pluginsync = true

Without pluginsync, any manifest with a printer resource in it will throw an error.

Examples

The most basic printer install possible:

printer { "Basic_Printer":
    ensure      => present,
    uri         => "lpd://hostname/printer_a",
    description => "This is the printer description",
    ppd         => "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Printer.ppd", # PPD file will be autorequired
}

Removing the printer "Basic_Printer" from the previous example:

printer { "Basic_Printer":
    ensure      => absent,
}

More advanced install using most of the available properties:

printer { "Extended_Printer":
    ensure      => present,
    uri         => "lpd://localhost/printer_a",
    description => "This is the printer description",
    location    => "Main office",
    ppd         => "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Printer.ppd", # Full path to vendor PPD
    # OR
    model       => "", # A valid model, you can list these with lpinfo -m
    enabled     => true, # Enabled by default
    shared      => false, # Disabled by default
    options     => { media => 'A4' }, # Hash of options ( name => value )
}

You can also set a number of default options which will apply to all printers by using the printer_defaults resource. For instance if you wanted to default the media option to 'A4' for all printers:

printer_defaults { "media":
    ensure => present,
    value  => "A4",
}

You can also set printer_defaults to ensure => absent, if you want the option to be unset.

Facts

The module provides access to one additional facter fact "printers", which provides a comma separated list of installed printers.

See the lpadmin(8) manual page for more information on valid device-uri's. You can execute lpoptions -l to list the valid options for the current printer.

For more information refer to the CUPS administrators manual.

Bugs

Please submit any issues through Github issues as I don't have a dedicated project page for this module.

Developer Guide

Vendor PPD Options

The provider does not currently generate PPD files based upon the vendor supplied printer definition. This means that if the vendor has supplied a PPD with Apple extensions i.e You see a UI which allows you to pick printer features, then you need to generate your own ppd first for distribution.

I would recommend doing a manual installation of the printer with the customizations from the ui picker, and then using the resulting PPD as the printer description. On OS X you can retrieve the ppd from /private/etc/cups/ppd after you have customized the printer features.

Contributing

You can issue a pull request and send me a message if you like, and I will consider taking the patch upstream :)

Testing

The tests need a lot of improvement, but you can run them with RSpec in the typical way:

Make sure you have:

rake

Install the necessary gems:

gem install rspec

And run the tests from the root of the source code:

rake test