Anyone use cups just to access remote network printer?

jkcunningham

I'm about to try to set up printing on my home LAN. I have two printers, neither of which are connected to my Gentoo machines (one is on my wife's Win2k machine and the other is on an old 486 running SuSE 8.1 set up as a dhcp and print server).

My question is this: what do I need to install on my Gentoo machines to print? Currently I can use Samba to see my wife's printer, but I haven't tried to print to it yet. I used to use lprng to print to the SuSE printer.

Should I install cups on one or more of these machines? I read somewhere there was an advantage of using its interface even to control network printers.

Thanks.
-Jeff

jkcunningham · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 3:47 pm Post subject:

I've changed the title and bumped to try to get a response.

dmitchell · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 4:59 pm Post subject:

Here's my setup: three computers (one with gentoo, the others with debian) all connected to a linksys router. One of the debian boxes is attached to a printer via parallel port and is running cupsd, the cups server. The other computers use this printer remotely. To get remote printing to work, I did the following:

1. Install and run cupsd on the box connected to the printer. You can point your browser to localhost:631 on this machine to do some printer configuration.
3. On the server, edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and change "Allow From 127.0.0.1" to "Allow From All". Be aware that this is probably not secure, but if you're on a trusted network you should be okay.
2. Install cups on the other two boxes, and add "ServerName <ip of printer box>" to /etc/cups/client.conf.

Note that only the box connected to the printer has to run cupsd. See the Gentoo Printing Guide (which discusses samba) for more info.

bendy · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 7:24 pm Post subject:

I would add that the kde printer dialog in the control centre is cups compatible, and that if you run cupsd on your clients as well it will usually automagically find other cups servers on your subnet.

jkcunningham · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 8:34 pm Post subject:

Thank you. I'm going to give it a shot.

-Jeff

taskara · Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:58 am Post subject:

hey - how did u go?

I can get windows machines to print to my gentoo server box, but I can't get cups on my gentoo machine to talk to cups on the gentoo server.

when I try I get this:
[img:1882c75444]http://www.penguinitis.com/images/cupserror.png[/img:1882c75444]

it says it's connecting to 192.168.0.10:631, which is indeed my gentoo server box, and I have made the changes u suggested, but it won't connect.

a permissions thing?

it's saying it can't get the list of printers.. so I changed the file permissions on /etc/cups/printers.conf

but still no luck.

any thoughts?

cheers
_________________
Kororaa install method - have Gentoo up and running quickly and easily, fully automated with an installer!

jkcunningham · Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 4:41 pm Post subject:

I got mine working (linux to linux) by enabling the cups server in the /etc/cups/client.conf. The default is set so the machine is looking for a cupsd server on localhost (127.0.0.1), and I set it to the machine that was actually providing the cupsd service for the printer:

ServerName 192.168.1.100

That fixed it.

-Jeff

Ian · Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 6:09 pm Post subject:

oh. wow...

WHY DO I ALWAYS TRY THE HARD WAY FIRST AND HORRIBLY FAIL!!!

Sorry, I'm just a bit mad because it's so damn easy, and I spent so much time to try and make it work, the wrong way (it never did, I gave up).

So, that being said, I no longer hate CUPS, as it actually works now

.

On another note, yay for randomly going to read this thread, as I'm completely bored out of my mind today

.

taskara · Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 10:55 pm Post subject:

jkcunningham · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:41 am Post subject:

Well, the other likely place to look is on the server end. You need to make sure you've enabled listening on your local net.

But either way, what do the logs say? That's your best source of info. Increase the log level in the server daemon and look at the logs. They will show you what is failing and why. Change the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to debug:

LogLevel debug

Then try to access the server and look in the log. Post it if you want.

-Jeff

taskara · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 3:08 am Post subject:

thanks.. I'll give it a go..
ta
_________________
Kororaa install method - have Gentoo up and running quickly and easily, fully automated with an installer!

taskara · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 7:09 am Post subject:

jkcunningham · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 2:50 pm Post subject:

Try these settings, then you can back off from them experimentally once you get it working:

Port 631
#Listen 127.0.0.1:631
##(comment out any 'Listen' settings and listen to anything on port 631

BrowseAddress &LOCAL
BrowseAllow &LOCAL

<Location />
Allow From &LOCAL
</Location>

<Location /admin>
Allow From 192.168.1.113
##(put an IP in here you want to be able to do admin from)
</Location>

-Jeff