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Book Review: CUPS Administrative Guide

By Deividson Luiz Okopnik

CAG.RVW 20081130
================
%A Ankur Shah
%C Birmingham, UK
%D 2008
%G ISBN-13: 978-1-84719-258-5
%I Packt Publishing Ltd.
%P 225 pages
%T "CUPS Administrative Guide"
%O http://packtpub.com

"Is there so much to administer on CUPS that it requires a 225-page book?" That was the very first question that crossed my mind when I decided to review this book. After reading it, and in reading this review, you may notice, as I did, that there's more than enough material.

The book starts with a quick overview of CUPS features, and some of the history of Linux printing. Then, chapter 2 shows you how to do simple CUPS installation and basic printer configuration.

Chapter 3 guides you through all basic steps of managing your printers, including adding and removing printers and managing print jobs via the command line. Then, it shows you how to use the Web interface to do the same management tasks - in other words, basic CUPS administration.

Starting with Chapter 4, this book starts to shine: it details several advanced CUPS features - and I really mean "details"! In Chapter 4, "Managing Multiple Printers at a Time": the book explains how such management gets done, what the printer classes are, the advantages and disadvantages of using them, how to create configurations, how to configure using both the command-line and Web interfaces, when to use and when not to use various features, and so on.

Other topics covered include management of the CUPS server, details of the CUPS configuration files, client setup including Windows clients over Samba, quotas, server monitoring, per-user print filtering, security, and much more.

The book explains those extra features with a level of detail that really impressed me: yes, there really is enough good material on CUPS administration to fill a 225-page book, with no room left over for padding.

Concluding the review, the book offers a lot of information. More than just information, it gives you the knowledge of someone who seems to have been administrating CUPS for quite some time. Really valuable.

More information about the book can be found in this page: http://www.packtpub.com/printing-with-cups-common-unix-printing-system/book


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[BIO]

Deividson was born in União da Vitória, PR, Brazil, on 14/04/1984. He became interested in computing when he was still a kid, and started to code when he was 12 years old. He is a graduate in Information Systems and is finishing his specialization in Networks and Web Development. He codes in several languages, including C/C++/C#, PHP, Visual Basic, Object Pascal and others.

Deividson works in Porto União's Town Hall as a Computer Technician, and specializes in Web and Desktop system development, and Database/Network Maintenance.


Copyright © 2008, Deividson Luiz Okopnik. Released under the Open Publication License unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.

Published in Issue 157 of Linux Gazette, December 2008

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