Howto Install and Customize CUPS-PDF in Debian

CUPS-PDF provides a PDF Writer backend to CUPS. This can be used as a virtual printer in a paperless network or to perform testing on CUPS.Documents are written to a configurable directory (by default to ~/PDF) or can be further manipulated by a post-processing command.

 

This tutorial will set up a virtual PDF printer that outputs files named with a timestamp into the folder ~/PDF.

 

Install CUPS-PDF in Debian

 

#aptitude install cups-pdf

 

Configuring CUPS-PDF

 

Now go to http://localhost:631″ in a browser,Add the virtual printer, choosing among the options presented,When prompted for a username and password, use "root" as your username and... your root password as your password!

 

Now go to Menu > Settings > Printing System Settings, select "CUPS"

 

Configure output settings

 

# vi /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf

 

To change the folder where generated PDF folders are created, edit the line "Out ${HOME}/PDF" to whatever you like.

 

CUPS-PDF doesn't allow you to change the name of the resulting file, so if you want to customize the filename, use the built-in post-processing option. Still in cups-pdf.conf, uncomment "PostProcessing" and set it to "/usr/local/bin/cups-pdf-renamer".

 

Create a simple shell script

 

# vi /usr/local/bin/cups-pdf-renamer

 

Paste the following code into that file:

 

#!/bin/bash

FILENAME=`basename $1`
DIRNAME=`dirname $1`
DATE=`date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S"`

mv $1 $DIRNAME"/"$DATE".pdf"

 

Save and exit the file.

 

Finally, give the script proper permissions

 

# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/cups-pdf-renamer

Now when you choose to print with cups-pdf, you should see a file with a name like "2009-03-16_10:57:03.pdf" in your ~/PDF directory.