Remote Printing

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Derrick wrote:

> I have a nice laser printer set up on my router which was installed via
> CUPS and shared via samba.  It works perfectly with my XP and 2k
> machines, but I am having trouble getting my 4.8 Desktop machine to
> print to it.  I installed the same version of CUPS on the desktop to try
> to facilitate the setup.  Right now, anytime I send a print job (print
> test page, line print), it connects, then says the printer is busy, will
> try again in 10 seconds.
>
> Any ideas on how to get through this?  Note:  I am not totally against
> trying a different way to configure the printer, I just am more
> familliar with CUPS than with printcap.

It's hard to tell from your message whether the printer has an internal
print server or is attached to a router which is acting as a print
server.  Either way, if the print server supports lpr/lpd, it's easy to
do with a printcap entry.  Having installed CUPS may complicate this; I
don't know what it does to existing lpr/lpd setups.

A simple printcap entry for a remote printer:

lp:\
	:lp=:\
	:sh:\
	:mx#0:\
	:rm=laser:\
	:rp=raw:\
	:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd/lp:\
	:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

"laser" is entered in /etc/hosts as the hostname and address of the
laser printer; you could also just enter the IP address of the printer
directly in printcap.  "raw" is the standard queue name for HP
JetDirects; some print servers don't care about the name, some are
picky.  /var/spool/output/lpd/lp is the spool directory, which has to be
created before you can print through this queue.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA