Department of Physics and Astronomy - Computer Facilities

Printing in the Rutgers Physics Department

There are a number of printers available for public use in the Physics Department via the local area network. These are accessed via queues on our central print server system via the LPD protocal. The network name of the print server is physprint.rutgers.edu. The available printers are summarized in the following table:

On the Sun Unix systems, printing can be done using the lpr command. The format is "lpr -P queue-name file-name". For example,

This same command will work on most of the staff-supported Linux systems. However, in that case the queue name must be preceeded with the letter "p". This is due to a restriction in the CUPS printing system used with Linux. For example,

On printers that support printing on both sides of the page, but which do not print on both sides by default, two-sided printing can be selected by including the switch setting "-Z duplex" in the lpr command.

On printers that support printing on both sides of the page, and which do print on both sides by default, one-sided printing can be selected by including the switch setting "-Z simplex" in the lpr command.

Setting up printing on Windows PC's

All printers are accessible from PC's running Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista via the Windows "Add Printer" wizard. However, it may be necessary to first install a Windows component not always installed by default. To check this, bring up the Windows control panel and select "Add/Remove Programs". From there, select "Add/Remove Windows Components". In the selection window, scroll down to "Other Network File and Print Services" and click on the "Details" button. In the resulting window, check to see that "Print Services for Unix" is selected. If it is, select "cancel" until you have exited from the "Add/Remove Programs" dialogue. If it is not checked, check the select box and click on "OK". Windows will then guide you through the installation of this service.

Once "Print Services for Unix" is installed, bring up the Windows "Add Printer" wizard. On the second screen, make sure to select "Local printer", not "Network printer". Also, do not select "Automatically detact and install my Plug and Play printer".

On the next screen, select the "Create a new port" option, and select "LPR port" in the pull-down menu. (If this selection is not available, "Print Services for Unix" was not installed.) On the next screen, enter physprint.rutgers.edu as the "Name or address of server providing lpd", and the desired queue name from the table above as the "Name of printer or print queue on the server".

After this, setup follows the normal Windows convention to select a driver specific to the model of the printer. This information is also available in the table above.

Setting up printing on Mac OS X

All the printers listed above can also be accessed from Macs running OS X. Although the instruction for adding is for OS X 10.4, it should be similar for OS X 10.5.

1. Start System Preference from the Applications folder.
2. Select Print & Fax.
3. Click on + to add a printer.
4. Choose Line Printer Daemon - LPD in the Protocal menu.
5. Enter physprint.rutgers.edu in the Address field.
6. Enter the queue name for one of the above printers for the Queue field.
7. Enter a name and location for the printer so you can identify it in the Printer pop-up.
8. Select an appropriate driver in the Print Using field. If you don't see a driver for your printer, you can use Generic PostScript Printer.
9. Click on Add to add the printer.