Printers

STAR's publicly available printers are listed below. 

IP name Wireless (Corus) CUPS URL	IP address	Model	Location	rcf2 Queue Name	Features
lj4700.star.bnl.gov http://cups.bnl.gov:631/printers/HP_Color_LaserJet_4700_2	130.199.16.220	HP Color LaserJet 4700DN	510, room M1-16	lj4700-star	color, duplexing, driver download site (search for LaserJet 4700, recommend the PCL driver)
lj4700-2.star.bnl.gov http://cups.bnl.gov:631/printers/lj4700-2.star.bnl.gov	130.199.16.221	HP Color LaserJet 4700DN	510, room M1-16	lj4700-2-star	color, duplexing, driver download site (search for LaserJet 4700, recommend the PCL driver)
onlprinter1.star.bnl.gov http://cups.bnl.gov/printers/onlprinter1.star.bnl.gov	130.199.162.165	HP Color LaserJet 4700DN	1006, Control Room	staronl1	color, duplexing
chprinter.star.bnl.gov N/A	130.199.162.178	HP Color LaserJet 3800dtn	1006C, mailroom	n/a	color, duplexing

There are additional printing resources available at BNL, such as large format paper, plotters, lamination and such.  Email us at starsupport 'at' bnl.gov and we might be able to help you locate such a resource if needed.

 

Printing from the wireless (Corus) network

The "standard" way of printing from the wireless network is to go through ITD's CUPS server on the wireless network.  How to do this varies from OS to OS, but here is a Windows walkthrough.  The key thing is getting the URI for the printer into the right place:
 

• Open the Printers Control Panel and click "Add a Printer". 
• Select the option to add a network printer.  (Ignore the list of printers that it generates automatically).
• Click on the button or option for "the printer that I want isn't listed". 
• Select the option for a shared printer and enter the green URL from the list above for the printer you want.
  eg. http://cups.bnl.gov:631/printers/HP_Color_LaserJet_4700_2
• On the next window, select the hardware manufacturer and model (if not listed, let Windows search for additional models).
• Print a test page and cross your fingers... 
• If your test print does not come out, it doesn't necessarily mean your configuration is wrong - sometimes a problem occurs on the the CUPS server that prevents printing - it isn't always easy to tell where the fault lies.

 

Since printing through ITD's CUPS servers at BNL has not been very reliable, here are some less convenient alternatives to using the printers that you may find handy.  (Note that with these, you can even print on our printers while you are offsite - probably not something to do often, but might come in handy sometimes.)
 

1.  Use VPN.  But if you are avoiding the internal network altogether for some reason, or can't use the VPN client, then keep reading...

2.  Get your files to rcf2.rhic.bnl.gov and print from there.  Most of printers listed above have rcf print queues (hence the column "rcf2 queue name").  But if you want to use a printer for which there is no queue on rcf2, or you have a format or file type that you can't figure out how to print from rcf2, then the next tip might be what you need.

3.  SSH tunnels can provide a way to talk directly (sort-of) to almost any printer on the campus wired network.  At least as far as your laptop's print subsystem is concerned, you will be talking directly to the printer.  (This is especially nice if you want to make various configuration changes to the print job through a locally installed driver.)  But if you don't understand SSH tunnels, this is gonna look like gibberish:

Here is the basic idea, using the printer in the Control Room.
It assumes you have access to both the RSSH and STAR SSH gateways.

The ITD SSH gateways might also work in place of rssh (I haven't
tried them yet).  If they can talk directly to our printers,
then it would eliminate step C below.

A.  From your laptop:

ssh -A -L 9100:127.0.0.1:9100 <username>@rssh.rhic.bnl.gov

(Note 1:  -A is only useful if you are running an ssh-agent with a
loaded key, which I highly recommend)

(Note 2:   Unfortunately, the rssh gateways cannot talk directly to our
printers, so we have to create another tunnel to a node that can...  If the
ITD SSH gateways can communicate directly with the printers, then the
next hop would be unnecessary...)

B.  From the rssh session:

ssh -L 9100:130.199.162.165:9100 <username>@stargw1.starp.bnl.gov

(Note 1: 130.199.162.165 is the IP address of onlprinter1.star.bnl.gov -
it could be replaced with any printer's IP address on the wired network.)
(Note 2:  port 9100 is the HP JetDirect default port - non-HP printers
might not use this, and there are other ways of communicating with HP
network printers, so ymmv - but the general idea will work with most TCP 
communications, if you know the port number in use. 

C.  On your laptop, set up a local print queue as if you were going to
print directly to the printer over the network (with no intermediate
server), but instead of supplying the printer's IP address, use
127.0.0.1 instead.

D. Start printing...


If you close either of the ssh sessions above, you will have to
re-establish them before you can print again. 

The two ssh commands can be combined into one and you can create an alias to
save typing the whole thing each time.  (Or use PuTTY or some other GUI SSH client
wrapper to save these details for reuse.)

You could set up multiple printers this way, but to use them
simultaneously, you would need to use unique port numbers for each one
(though the port number at the end of the printer IP would stay 9100).