Re: [gentoo-user] Print to cups printer from Windows - any good instructions?

[Willie Wong]

(Sorry if this one is a dupe... my SSH connection went kaplui and I
wasn't quite sure whether the mail got sent)

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 01:04:25PM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>    I'm looking around for up to date instructions/wikis/howtos on how
> to set up Samba on my CUPS server to allow me to print from Windows.

Why SAMBA? 

I've recently set up printing for a small home network following this
guide: http://www.owlfish.com/thoughts/winipp-cups-2003-07-20.html

Basically you just need 

  1) Correct permissions in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
      a) You need the line "Port 631" to allow remote access
      b) Maybe (I am not sure about this one) you need "Browsing On"
          to allow sharing?
      c) You need the section for "<Location />" to have "Allow From
          192.168.0.*" or whatever netmask you use. 
  2) Either
      a) A working printer that you can print locally from the cups
          server via "lpr -P<NAME>". In this case you can just tell
          the Windows computers to print to 
            http://<cups server ip>:631/printers/<NAME>
          using a generic postscript driver. 
     or
      b) A working printer for which you have the Windows drivers. You
          need to then setup a raw queue (basically a print queue that
          does not have a cups driver associated to it so the Windows
          boxes can directly send commands to the printer). You tell
          the Windows computers to print to
            http://<cups server ip>:631/printers/<RAW queue name>
          using the Windows drivers for the printer. 

Now, I tried setting up linux printing 5 years ago using the CLI and
it sucked. Last week I used the GUI from cups and it was extremely
easy. This is one of the few cases I highly recommend using the GUI:
you are unlikely to fiddle with it much after it is installed, so
the steep learning curve for dealing with the text config files may
not be worth it. Since you mentioned that your server does not have a
GUI, you need to edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to allow admin remotely.
Basically you just need to "Allow 192.168.0.*" or whatever appropriate
subnet in the sections for "<Location /admin>" and 
"<Location /admin/conf>" in the config file. After that just point a
browser to https://<cups server ip>:631/ and you are set to go. 

Note that the document in the link thinks that it may be necessary to
modify the Windows host files and access the cups server via name,
rather than ip address. For my home network it works fine with just
the ip address. YMMV. 

HTH, 

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                      wwong@××××××××××××××.edu
408 Fine Hall,  Department of Mathematics,  Princeton University,  Princeton
A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.