Linux has great support for printers; the right tool for the job is called CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). Since the beginning of the project, back in 1999, the installation and maintenance of CUPS has improved dramatically.

In this document we will cover how to use CUPS to setup a local or networked printer. We will not go in too much detail since the project has great documentation available for advanced usage.

When you want to install a printer on your system you need to know how your printer will be attached to your system. Is it through a local port like LPT or USB, or is it networked? And if it is, does it use the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) or is it through the Microsoft Windows SMB-CIFS protocol (Microsoft Windows Sharing)?

The next few sections explain what minimal kernel configuration you need. Of course, this depends on how your printer is going to be attached to your system, so for your convenience we have separated the instructions:

• Locally Attached Printer (LPT)
• Locally Attached Printer (USB)
• Remotely Attached Printer (IPP)
• Remotely Attached Printer (SMB-CIFS)

So manoeuvre to /usr/src/linux and run make menuconfig to enter the kernel configuration. If you used genkernel to configure your kernel, you should still perform these steps just to make sure nothing was missed out.

In the next configuration examples, we will add the necessary support in the kernel, not as modules. This is not mandatory; if you want you can easily use modular support. Don't forget to load the appropriate modules afterwards. We also use a 2.6 kernel configuration example; 2.4 users might find the appropriate configuration directives elsewhere.

Now go to the appropriate section to configure (or check) your kernel.

The LPT port is generally used to identify the parallel printer port. You need to enable parallel port support first, then PC-style parallel port support (unless you are a SPARC user) after which you enable parallel printer support.

Device Drivers -->
  <*> Parallel port support
  <*>   PC-style hardware

Device Drivers -->
  Character Devices -->
    <*> Parallel printer support
       [*]      IEEE 1284 transfer modes)

That's it; quit the kernel configuration and rebuild your kernel. Don't forget to copy the new kernel image to the /boot location (and don't forget to mount /boot if needed) and update your boot loader configuration prior to rebooting your system.

Now continue with Installing and Configuring CUPS.

To enable USB printing, you need USB support and USB printer support.

Device Drivers -->
  USB Support -->
    <*> Support for Host-side USB
    (...)
    --- USB Host Controller Drivers
    (Select the HCD that your system uses. If you do not know which one
     to select, run "lspci -v | grep HCI" from another terminal)
    <*> EHCI HCD (USB 2.0) support ( or )
    <*> OHCI HCD support           ( or )
    <*> UHCI HCD (most Intel and VIA) support
    (...)
    <*> USB Printer support

That's it; quit the kernel configuration and rebuild your kernel. Don't forget to copy the new kernel image to the /boot location (and don't forget to mount /boot if needed) and update your boot loader configuration prior to rebooting your system.

Now continue with Installing and Configuring CUPS.

To be able to connect to a remotely attached printer through the Internet Printing Protocol your kernel just needs to have networking support. Assuming your kernel has that already, continue with Installing and Configuring CUPS.

Your kernel must support SMB CIFS:

File systems -->
  Network File Systems -->
    <*> SMB file system support (to mount Windows shares etc.)
    <*> CIFS support (advanced network file system for Samba, Windows and other CIFS compliant servers)

That's it; quit the kernel configuration and rebuild your kernel. Don't forget to copy the new kernel image to the /boot location (and don't forget to mount /boot if needed) and update your boot loader configuration prior to rebooting your system.

Now continue with Installing and Configuring CUPS.

Installing CUPS with Gentoo is a breeze. CUPS has a few optional features that might interest you. To enable or disable those features, use the USE flags associated with them.

Check the current USE settings. If you want to deviate from your current USE settings for CUPS alone, add the appropriate USE flags to /etc/portage/package.use.

# emerge -pv cups
[ebuild N     ] net-print/cups-1.2.6  "X dbus jpeg nls pam png ppds ssl -php -samba -slp -tiff" 0 kB

(For instance, to enable SAMBA support for CUPS)
# nano -w /etc/portage/package.use
net-print/cups samba

If you are happy with the result, have Portage install CUPS.

# emerge cups

If the printer is attached to your system locally, you need to load CUPS automatically on start-up. Make sure your printer is attached and powered on before you start CUPS.

# /etc/init.d/cupsd start
# rc-update add cupsd default

The default CUPS server configuration in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf is sufficient for most users. However, several users might need some changes to the CUPS configuration.

In the next sections we cover a few changes that are often needed:

• In Remote Printer Access we allow other systems to use the printer attached to this Linux workstation.
• In CUPS Remote Administration we grant access to the CUPS administration from remote systems
• In Enable Support for Windows PCL Drivers you configure CUPS to support Windows PCL drivers. This is advised if you want Windows systems to be able to use a Samba-shared printer as most Windows drivers are PCL drivers.
• In Setting Up a Remote Printer we configure this system to use a printer attached to another system (not Windows share).

If you want other systems to use your printer through IPP you need to explicitly grant access to the printer in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. If you want to share your printer using SAMBA, this change is not needed.

Open up /etc/cups/cupsd.conf in your favorite editor and add in an Allow line for the system(s) that should be able to reach to your printer. In the next example, we grant access to the printer from localhost and from any system whose IP address starts with 192.168.0.

<Location />
  Order allow,deny
  Allow localhost
  Allow 192.168.0.*
  Deny all
</Location>

Also, you will need to specify which port CUPS listens to, so that it will respond to printing requests from other machines on your network.

Listen *:631
(Make sure that localhost is commented out)
#Listen localhost:631

Port 631
(Make sure the next two lines are commented out)
#Listen 127.0.0.1:631
#Listen localhost:631

If you are interested in remote administration, you need to grant access from other systems than just localhost to the CUPS administration. Edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and have it explicitly grant access to the systems you want. For instance, to grant access to the system with IP address of 192.168.0.3:

<Location /admin>
(...)
  Encryption Required
  Order allow,deny
  Allow localhost
  Allow 192.168.0.3
  Deny all
</Location>

Do not forget to restart CUPS after making changes to /etc/cups/cupsd.conf by running /etc/init.d/cupsd restart.

PCL drivers send raw data to the print server. To enable raw printing on CUPS, you need to edit /etc/cups/mime.types and uncomment the line application/octet-stream if it is not already uncommented. Then you need to edit /etc/cups/mime.convs and do the same, if it is not already uncommented.

# vim /etc/cups/mime.types
(Uncomment the line so that the file contains:)
application/octet-stream

# vim /etc/cups/mime.convs
(Uncomment the line so that the file contains:)
application/octet-stream     application/vnd.cups-raw    0    -

Do not forget to restart CUPS after making these changes by running /etc/init.d/cupsd restart.

If the printers are attached to a remote CUPS-powered server you can easily set up your system to use the remote printer by changing the /etc/cups/client.conf file.

Assuming the printer is attached to a system called printserver.mydomain, open up /etc/cups/client.conf with your favorite editor and set the ServerName directive:

# vim /etc/cups/client.conf

(Substitute printserver.mydomain with your print server name)
ServerName printserver.mydomain

The remote system will have a default printer setting which you will be using. If you want to change the default printer, use lpoptions:

(First list the available printers)
# lpstat -a
hpljet5p accepting requests since Jan 01 00:00
hpdjet510 accepting requests since Jan 01 00:00

(Set the HP LaserJet 5P as the default printer)
# lpoptions -d hpljet5p

If the printer you want to configure is remotely available through a different print server (running CUPS) you do not need to follow these instructions. Instead, read Setting Up a Remote Printer.

If you have a USB printer or your parallel port printer was powered on when you booted your Linux system, you might be able to retrieve information from the kernel stating that it has successfully detected your printer. However this is merely an indication and not a requirement.

(For a parallel port printer)
$ dmesg | grep -i print
parport0: Printer, Hewlett-Packard HP LaserJet 2100 Series

(For a USB printer)
$ lsusb
(...)
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 03f0:1004 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 970c/970cse

To have the printer installed on your system, fire up your browser and have it point to http://localhost:631. You will be greeted by the CUPS web interface from which you can perform all administrative tasks.

Go to Administration and enter your root login and password information at the box. Then, when you have reached the administrative interface, click on Add Printer. You will be greeted by a new screen allowing you to enter the following information:

• The spooler name, a short but descriptive name used on your system to identify the printer. This name should not contain spaces or any special characters. For instance, for the HP LaserJet 5P you could say hpljet5p.
• The location, a description where the printer is physically located (for instance in your room, or in the kitchen right next to your dish washer, ...). This is to help maintaining several printers.
• The description in which you should place a full description of the printer. A common use is the full printer name (like "HP LaserJet 5P").

The next screen asks you for the device where the printer listens to. You will have the choice of several devices. The next table covers a few possible devices, but the list is not exhaustive.

If you are installing a remote printer, you will be asked for the URI to the printer:

• An LPD printer server requires a lpd://hostname/queue syntax
• An HP JetDirect printer requires a socket://hostname syntax
• An IPP printer requires a ipp://hostname/printers/printername or http://hostname:631/ipp/queue syntax.

Next, select the printer manufacturer in the adjoining screen and the model type and number in the subsequent one. For many printers you will find multiple drivers. You can either select one now or search on LinuxPrinting.org's Printer List for a good driver. You can change drivers easily later on.

Once the driver is selected, CUPS will inform you that the printer has been added successfully to the system. You can now go to the printer management page on the administration interface and select Configure Printer to change the printer settings (resolution, page format, ...).

To verify if the printer is working correctly, go to the printer administration page, select your printer and click on Print Test Page.

If the printer does not seem to work correctly, click on Modify Printer to reconfigure the printer. You will be greeted with the same screens as during the first installation but the defaults will now be your current configuration.

If you have no idea why your printer does not function, you might get a clue by looking at /var/log/cups/error_log. In the next example we find out that there is a permission error, probably due to a wrong Allow setting in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.

# tail /var/log/cups/error_log
(...)
E [11/Jun/2005:10:23:28 +0200] [Job 102] Unable to get printer status (client-error-forbidden)!

Many printer drivers exist; to find out which one has the best performance for your printer, visit the LinuxPrinting Printer List. Select your brand and type to find out what driver the site recommends. For instance, for the HP LaserJet 5P, the site recommends the ljet4 driver.

Download the PPD file from the site and place it in /usr/share/cups/model, then run /etc/init.d/cupsd restart as root. This will make the driver available through the CUPS web interface. Now reconfigure your printer as described above.

Some printers require specific drivers or provide additional features that are not enabled through the regular configuration process as described above. This chapter will discuss a selection of printers and how they are made to work with Gentoo Linux.

The following printers and/or drivers are covered:

• Gimp-Print Driver
• HPLIP Driver (deprecates HPOJ and HPIJS)
• PNM2PPA Driver

The gimp-print drivers are high-quality, open source printer drivers for various Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, Sony, Olympus and PCL printers supporting CUPS, ghostscript, The Gimp and other applications.

Gentoo's Portage Tree contains an ebuild for the gimp-print drivers. Just use emerge to install them. Note that the ebuild listens to quite a few USE flags (such as cups and ppds). You must have enabled at least these two flags!

# emerge gimp-print

When the emerge process has finished, the Gimp-Print drivers will be available through the CUPS web interface.

The HPLIP Project embraces the hpijs driver and includes scanner support and service tools for various multi-purpose peripherals. For printing support, you must have the ppds USE flag enabled.

(Check that the ppds USE flag is enabled)
# emerge -vp hplip
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] net-print/hplip-0.9.5  +X +cups +foomaticdb +ppds -qt -scanner -snmp +usb 9,255 kB 

Total size of downloads: 9,255 kB

# emerge hplip
# /etc/init.d/hplip start
# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart
# rc-update add hplip default

When the emerge process has finished, the printer drivers will be available through the CUPS web interface.

PPA is an HP technology that focuses on sending low-level processing to the system instead of to the printer which makes the printer cheaper but more resource consuming.

If the LinuxPrinting site informs you that the pnm2ppa driver is your best option, you need to install the pnm2ppa filter on your system:

# emerge pnm2ppa

Once installed, download the PPD file for your printer from the LinuxPrinting site and put it in /usr/share/cups/model. Next, configure your printer using the steps explained above.

Microsoft Windows supports IPP (Windows 9x and ME users need to install it separately). To install a printer that is attached to your Linux box on Windows, fire up the Add Printer wizard and select Network Printer. When you are asked for the URI, use the http://hostname:631/printers/queue syntax.

Make sure that your systems can reach your printer!

To share the printer on the SMB-CIFS network, you must have SAMBA installed and configured correctly. How to do this is beyond the scope of this document, but we will quickly deal with the configuration of SAMBA for shared printers.

Open /etc/samba/smb.conf with your favorite editor and add a [printers] section to it:

[printers]
  comment      = All printers
  path         = /var/spool/samba
  browseable   = no
  guest ok     = no
  writable     = no
  printable    = yes
  public       = yes
  printer name = hpljet5p

Now navigate to the top of the smb.conf file until you are inside the [global] section. Then locate the printcap name and printing settings and set each of them to cups:

[global]
  (...)
  printcap name = cups
  printing      = cups

Make sure you enabled the Windows PCL drivers support in CUPS. Then, restart the smb service to have the changes take effect.

First of all, make sure that the printer is shared on your Windows system.

Next, in the CUPS web interface, configure your printer as described previously. You will notice that CUPS has added another driver called Windows Printer via SAMBA. Select it and use the smb://username:password@workgroup/server/printername or smb://server/printername syntax for the URI.

Many tools exist that help you configure a printer, use additional printing filters, add features to your printing capabilities, etc. This chapter lists a few of them. The list is not exhaustive and not meant to discuss each tool in great detail.

With Gtk-LP you can install, modify and configure your printer from a stand-alone Gtk application. It uses CUPS and provides all standard CUPS capabilities as well. Definitely worth checking out if you dislike the CUPS Web interface or want a stand-alone application for your day-to-day printing routines.

To install it, emerge gtklp:

# emerge gtklp

If you are having printing troubles and /var/log/cups/error_log shows this message:

Unable to convert file 0 to printable format

You need to re-emerge ghostscript-esp with the cups USE flag. You can either add cups to your USE flags in /etc/make.conf, or you can enable it only for ghostscript-esp as shown:

# echo "app-text/ghostscript-esp cups" >> /etc/portage/package.use

Then emerge ghostscript-esp. When it has finished compiling, be sure to restart cupsd afterward:

# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart