(no subject)

[da]

Yesterday when bats22 was over, we talked a bit about my home networking, because I've got this tangle of problems to solve. Our home firewall/router/wireless/printserver (SMC Barricade) is showing its age (5 years now! eek...) and flaking out frequently.

As part of this, I decided to give another shot at adding the home printer to a Linux box. This way I could simplify the constraints on what I needed to replace, since parallel print-servers are no longer very common in home firewall/routers.

I was successful last night, with only about an hour of work and googling. ...I'll put my notes here, though really they should go somewhere googleable. This was much simpler than I expected it to be, since the last time I tried I spent many frustrating hours.

Actors:
Debian 3.1 ("stable") server; internet-connected behind HW firewall
Mac laptop(s); clients.
HP DeskJet (model 6MP), parallel interface.

1) "apt-get install printconf" installed all the programs I needed, including CUPS. One of the questions it asked was "configure printers now?" Since it said that could be done later with "printconf" I said no, to try and minimize concurrent steps.

2) printconf didn't recognize the printer; but that's fine; linuxprinting.org was useful for recommending drivers (step 5 below).

3) CUPS was installed by default to run on local port 631. I looked in /etc/cups and saw that httpd.conf allowed connections from localhost. I added a line after "Allow From 127.0.0.1" to also allow access to any other host on my local network. ("Allow From 192.168.1.*") I also added the same line at the bottom for administration access. Otherwise, the debian defaults are fine.

4) From my mac, I browsed to http://server:631/ (replacing "server" with my server's IP on the local network). I added the printer to CUPS via the web interface. That was basically intuitive, clicking through the manufacturer and model. Device: Parallel Port #1. I named the printer "lj". Done.

5) linuxprinting.org recommended a new ppd file (driver). Since I'm using CUPS, all I needed to do was drop the ppd file into the /etc/cups/ppd directory, moving aside the one CUPS already made for my printer.

I printed a test page, and it worked. OK, now I could print from the server. Halfway there! [1]

6) On the mac, I used "Printer Setup Utility" to add a new printer. IP Printer, "IPP" (not LPD). For the address I used my server's IP. The queue name took a bit of puzzling though config files [2]. What worked was "printers/lj" (as "lj" was the name I'd given the printer on the server).

I test-printed a page... and it worked. Easy as that.

[1] at the same time I noodled with the web interface I was also checking the config files in /etc/cups to see what it was doing. I noted that printers.conf had added the printer as: "device URI: parallel:/dev/lp0". That made sense too, since it was parallel.

[2] the mac's config files are also in /etc/cups. Yes, macs use the same programs under the hood. So I was also looking in the mac's /etc/cups/printers.conf to see what changed when I changed different things in the GUI; meaning I could make more intelligent guesses in the web interface.

The mac side was much simpler than I expected. Last time, my test client-computer was a Windows box; I was also luckier with my googling. The first few comments on this page told me everything I needed to add on the client; I just edited the config file on the mac to match what it would've been in Ubuntu.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Oo! These references could be quite useful. Our printer used to hang off of my Mac, which makes little sense now that we both use laptops. It's occurred to me that hanging it off the file server is the best choice at this juncture.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it!