CUPS is the Common Unix Printing System, we assume you have previous knowledge of CUPS and that you have it already working.

Alambic is really a CUPS backend, meaning it's a special CUPS filter which interacts directly with a printing device. In the case of Alambic, the printing device is the PostScript to PDF converter and the HTTP and SMTP servers used to distribute the resulting PDF documents.

The first task to achieve is to let CUPS know about Alambic. This is done by creating a symbolic link in the CUPS backend directory that points to the Alambic binary located in the bin subdirectory of your Alambic installation. Another symbolic link must be created in the model directory of CUPS that points to the PostScript Printer Description file Alambic.ppd. The CUPS daemon must then be restarted in order for CUPS to recognize the new backend and PPD.

Once the backend and PPD are known, Alambic printers can be defined. Those printers have a DEVICE_URI of the form Alambic:/PATH/TO/ALAMBIC/CONFIG/FILE and use the PostScript Printer Description file Alambic.ppd.

To create an Alambic printer named Alambic you would issue the following command:

  lpadmin -p Alambic -v Alambic:/PATH/TO/Alambic.cf -m Alambic.ppd -E

If you wish to allow access to your newly defined printer via the LPD protocol, you should set up the CUPS lpd frontend. Please refer to the CUPS documentation for this part. This mode of access is needed if you have client computers that do not support the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), such as Windows NT, Windows 98 or Windows 95.