title: Red Hat Enterprise and Xerox WorkCentres link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/red-hat-enterprise-and-xerox-workcentres/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 719 created: 2007/05/01 18:43:00 created_gmt: 2007/05/01 18:43:00 comment_status: open post_name: red-hat-enterprise-and-xerox-workcentres status: publish post_type: post

Red Hat Enterprise and Xerox WorkCentres

My company purchased a boatload of Xerox WorkCentres of various models some time ago and recently completed deployment to all the sales branches throughout the U.S., including the one outside Raleigh where I work. Since my primary desktop runs CentOS 4.4, it was only a matter of time before I saw the need to get at least one printer configured for my machine. Today, giving in to my inherent laziness, I decided to set up a second one that sits closer to me.

These are networked printers, of course. Instead of using the IPP protocol, which wasn’t enabled by default by our deskop support team (who were only concerned with making sure the Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP desktops worked), I make my connections using HP JetDirect emulation.

I started out by using Red Hat’s printconf-gui tool to create a plain vanilla “Generic Postscript” printer named appropriately for what it was, set up as a JetDirect device using port 9100. Once this was done, I needed the right .ppd file (Postscript Printer Description), a standard used by printer manufacturers.

For the WorkCentre Pro 232 that I was working with, what I needed was the latest “Printer Model Package” from Xerox’s “Support and Drivers” section. In my case this was a file named PrinterPkgXPXX_2005_06_06.tar, that untarred to a directory of the same name and contained a subdirectory called “ppd”. By simply copying the right .ppd, xr_WorkCentrePro232.ppd and copying it to /usr/share/cups/model/xerox, I was then able to import it using printconf-gui’s “Action … Import PPD”.

After restarting the cups daemon (printconf-gui prompts to do this), I was able to print a test document to verify it was working.

Note: I intentionally didn’t provide hyperlinks to the Xerox support pages and the file discussed here, since the company’s site appears to be generated out of a database, increasing the likelihood that any links du jour may not work on the reader’s visit to the site — which kind of defeats the whole purpose of a hyperlink.

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