Sharing RAW printers with BrowsePoll

[prosmart]

Greetings

We are trying to set up a centralised CUPS server whose printers we will share using the BrowsePoll directive on other servers running CUPS. We are dealing with 700+ printers and would like to not have to define them multiple times across multiple systems.

The issue we are facing is that the application software in use only works for a driver type of "RAW" (and a printer that speaks PCL-5E). If we define any other printer type the printer is shared immediately and successfully. If we define it as "RAW", then CUPS just does not share it (silently).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can do this?
TIA
N/

[michaelrsweet]

You cannot share raw printers, and support for raw printers is going away.

What you probably want is to setup the print queues with a suitable PCL driver and then enable raw printing of PCL files (the default on many Linux distros).

[prosmart]

Thanks for the response Michael. I understand that RAW is deprecated and has been for some years. The problem we have is that the application in question is under the control of a third party who do not support anything except "RAW" (Yes, I know). They squirt control characters (PCL-5E - but not PCL-6) into the print stream. to control orientation etc.

We're going to have to experiment with using PCL as you suggested.