Departemental printers

Overview

Shortcut:

Printing is possible from:

  • Campusroam/eduroam directly
  • OpenVPN
  • Cabled Dept CS Network

Departemental/system-group-administered machines:

On laptops, desktops and servers administered by the system group, printers are correctly configured by default.
No configuration is required to print.

Self-administered machines:

On laptops, desktops administered by yourself, departmental printers can be configured and used locally. Follow these steps:

  • In case your OS is Non-Windows and you want to be able to print over OpenVPN or Campus/Eduroam directly
    your local account MUST be the same as your departmental account
  • Register your machine: Read instructions below
  • Follow OS-specific configuration:
  • Printer-specific instructions:

    Note: After adding the printers in the table below, please double check the settings on your system!

    Printer Setting
    p4g-A3 PageSize: 'A3'
    InputSlot: 'Tray3'
    p4g-slide PageSize: 'A4'
    MediaType: 'ColorLaserTransparency'
    InputSlot: 'Tray2'

Registration

It may be possible that your machine is already registered. You can check this by logging into a departmental machine (e.g. your homedir server), and executing:

ypmatch <your machine name> cs-info
  e.g. $ ypmatch tadaa cs-info
  tadaa::is#gebonden#aan#passwd##johndoe:serialnr=ABCDEFGH, mac=xx-xx-xx-xx-xx, HP Elitebook 855 G8, HP EliteBook 855 G8:csDynHost:2023/10/20::cs-cvs-master
No output means it is not registerd.
Self-administered machines (desktops and laptops) need to be registered to be allowed to print.
We use the network/insurance/DHCP registration to set up your print accounting. This enables us to keep track of only one list of machines for all of these purposes.

REGISTER HERE


Webprint

There are some other ways to print something without having to bother to install or configure or learn print queues, servers and commands:

  • use the web-based print-folder (ANY machine with network access):
    • Login with your departmental account on https://www.cs.kuleuven.be/csprint/, select a printer and upload the (PDF) file you want to print
      • If you don't have a departmental account but you do have an account in the departmental (student) computer labs, you can use the student web print which gives access to the student printer(s) on the ground floor.
    • Advantages:
      • no configuration whatsoever ... just print to PDF-file and upload the file
      • you can select which printer your print jobs are printed on
      • web-based, so only a web-browser is needed
    • Disadvantages:
      • you have to print to PDF-file and upload that file
      • printed using generic print options (e.g. no extra number of copies)
      • you have to wait until the next invocation of the web-based print-folder-processing command (usually within only a couple of minutes, check by reloading the web-page)
      • web-based, so a web-browser is needed
  • use a print-folder and the print-folder-processing command in your home directory (System Group Administered machines ONLY):
    • /usr/local/bin/cs-printfolder.pl --help
    • Advantages:
      • you can select which printer your print jobs are printed on
      • you keep a history of the actual print jobs
      • you can use whichever method you like best to upload the file to the directory you specify (sftp, scp, rsync, filezilla, dropbox, ...)
    • Disadvantages:
      • you have to print to PDF-file and upload that file
      • you have to wait until the next invocation of the print-folder-processing command (when installed in a crontab) or execute it manually before your jobs are actually printed
      • you have to clean up the history of your print jobs yourself

Print Accounting

To keep track of printer usage, print jobs are accounted using a printer accounting system ... for details, consult the printers page referred to on the top of this page; in short:

  • Students have to pay
  • Personnel doesn't have to pay

Though, as personnel, you may be interested in how your print accounting is stored.
In that case read on.

Print accounting is used to keep track of print usage.
For all personnel printing from any registered machine, accounting is done on Account Name
To know your balance, please check : https://system.cs.kuleuven.be/cs/system/wegwijs/services/pykota/

To do correct print accounting, it is of prime importance to provide us with the correct information upon registration.