Running InfoPrint Manager for Linux in a container

When you configure a virtual operating system to run in a container, follow the same considerations as you would when you configure it on a physical system. The way the container was created remains transparent as long as it complies with Open Container Initiative (OCI) specifications.

Container Management System and InfoPrint Manager

Container Management System
InfoPrint Manager runs on the following operating system images, which must be started with init:
  • Red Hat Universal Base Images
  • Rocky Linux Base Images.
  • AlmaLinux Base Images.

File system configuration planning

Ricoh recommends that the file systems be mounted as volumes in the container. You must create these volumes before installing InfoPrint Manager. InfoPrint Manager mounted file systems include:

  • /var/lib/pd
  • /var/pd
  • /var/pddir
  • /var/psf
  • /var/psf/segments
    Important:
  • Since during initial system installation (for instance, the docker-compose build command for Docker or the podman-compose build command for Podman) the container does not have access to the external volumes, a manual step is needed to copy the folder structure created by the InfoPrint Manager installer to a temporary local folder.
  • When the container is started for the first time with the above-mentioned volumes mounted, the backed-up folder structure must be restored to the mounted volumes.
  • This procedure must be run every time an InfoPrint Manager update is applied to the system.
  • Ensure that any necessary ports for InfoPrint Manager are exposed from the container. For more information, see Ports used by InfoPrint Manager for AIX, Linux, and Windows.

If your InfoPrint Manager installation drives printers that use either the CUPS, BSD, or PSFOther device support systems (DSSs), make sure that you synchronize the /etc/cups directory with a separate container image. Even though these files are Linux system files and not InfoPrint Manager files, InfoPrint Manager uses data to these files that is critical to ensuring that certain printers appear after the container reinitialization. If this directory is not persistent, certain InfoPrint Manager actual destination objects may have to be deleted and redefined each time you upgrade the container.

In this section:

  1. Installing InfoPrint Manager for Linux in a container
Parent topic: Planning for configuration