PAPD(8)

📦
version 4.5.1 · 9 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ PAPD — the AppleTalk print server daemon, aka your printer's new bestie ✨

okay so real talk, this is the manual page for papd from the Netatalk AFP Fileserver Manual (section 8, system admin tools, iykyk 💅). She's the AppleTalk print server daemon and she is thriving.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

papd [-d] [-f configfile] [-p printcap] [-P pidfile]

papd [-v | -V]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

papd is the AppleTalk printer daemon, no cap. She accepts print jobs from AppleTalk clients (usually Macintosh computers, periodt) using the Printer Access Protocol — PAP, bestie, not the other kind 🎀.

When she's running with System V printing systems, papd spools jobs straight into an lpd(8) spool directory and then wakes up lpd after she's accepted a job from the network, so lpd can go re-examine the appropriate spool directory. The actual printing and spooling? Entirely handled by lpd, not her, she's just the messenger 💅.

She can also pipe the print job to an external program for processing, and honestly this is the preferred method on systems that aren't using CUPS, because it dodges all the compatibility drama with every flavour of lpd out there 😭.

As of Netatalk 2.0, CUPS is supported too, slay ✨. Literally just use cupsautoadd as the first papd.conf entry and she'll share all CUPS printers automatically, iconic. You can still overwrite those defaults by individually defining printer shares, so no worries. See papd.conf(5) for the details on the configuration file format, because that's a whole other page.

papd is typically started at boot time from system init scripts or services. First thing she does is read from her configuration file, papd.conf 📖.

And if no configuration file is given? The hostname of the machine gets used as the NBP name, and all options just take their default value. main character energy, honestly.

💖 OPTIONS 💖

  • -d — Do not fork or disassociate from the terminal. She stays right there with you, holding your hand 🫶.
  • -f configfile — Consult configfile instead of papd.conf for the configuration information.
  • -p printcap — Consult printcap instead of /etc/printcap for LPD configuration information.
  • -P pidfile — Specifies the file in which papd stores its process id.
  • -v | -V — Print version information and exit.

🔐 AUTHENTICATION 🔐

PSSP (Print Server Security Protocol) is an authentication protocol carried out through postscript printer queries to the print server. Using PSSP requires LaserWriter 8.6.1 or greater on the client Mac, bestie, no getting around it. The user will be prompted to enter their username and password before they print. ngl, it may be necessary to re-setup the printer on each client the first time PSSP is enabled, so that the client can figure out that authentication is required to print 🙈. You can enable PSSP on a per-printer basis. PSSP is the recommended method of authenticating printers because it is more robust than CAP-style authentication, which we're getting to below.

CAP-style authentication gets its name from the method CAP (Columbia AppleTalk Package) used to authenticate its Mac clients' printing. This method requires that a user login to a file share before they print. afpd records the username in a temporary file named after the client's AppleTalk address, and it deletes the temporary file when the user disconnects. So therefore 👑, CAP style authentication will not work for clients connected to afpd via TCP/IP. papd gets the username from the file with the same AppleTalk address as the machine connecting to it. CAP-style authentication will work with any Mac client, so that's the tradeoff. If both CAP and PSSP are enabled for a particular printer, CAP will be tried first, then papd will fall back to PSSP.

The list of UAMs to use for authentication (specified with the am option) applies to all printers. It is not possible to define different authentication methods on each printer, so don't even try it 💀. You can specify the list of UAMs multiple times, but only the last setting will be used. Currently, uams_guest.so and uams_clrtxt.so are supported as printer authentication methods. The guest method requires a valid username, but not a password. The Cleartext UAM requires both a valid username and the correct password.

NOTE: Print authentication is only supported on Mac OS 9 and earlier. 😭

📁 FILES 📁

  • papd.conf — Default configuration file ✨.
  • /etc/printcap — Printer capabilities database.
  • .ppd — PostScript Printer Description file. papd answers configuration and font queries from printing clients by consulting the configured PPD file. Such files are available from Adobe, Inc., or from the printer's manufacturer. If no PPD file is configured, papd will return the default answer, possibly causing the client to send excessively large jobs 👀 (not ideal, bestie).

⚠️ CAVEATS ⚠️

papd accepts characters with the high bit set (a full 8-bits) from the clients, but some PostScript printers (including Apple's LaserWriter family) only accept 7-bit characters on their serial interface by default. The same applies for some printers when they're accessed via TCP/IP methods (remote LPR or socket). You will need to configure your printer to accept a full 8 bits, or take special precautions and convert the printjob's encoding (e.g. by using co="protocol=BCP" when using CUPS 1.1.19 or above). Do not skip this, fr fr.

When printing clients run Mac OS X 10.2 or later, take care that PPDs do not make use of *cupsFilter: comments unless the appropriate filters are installed at the client's side, too. 🌈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

lp(1), lpr(1), lprm(1), printcap(5), lpc(8), lpd(8), papd.conf(8)

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Contributors to the Netatalk Project (https://netatalk.io/contributors) — absolute icons, every single one of them 🫶

and that's the whole vibe check bestie: this page ships with Netatalk 4.5.1, so go forth and print, you've got this 💖✨🦋

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