Setting up a network printer

jenny — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:59:44 -0700

Providing you have a working local printer using CUPS, it's quite easy to share it across a local subnet.

In /etc/cups/cupsd.conf on the CUPS server, add a line directly after this line:

Listen localhost:631

...using the IP of the server:

Listen localhost:631
Listen 10.0.0.2:631

In the same file, locate this section:

# Restrict access to the server...
<Location />
  Order allow,deny
</Location>

# Restrict access to the admin pages...
<Location /admin>
  Order allow,deny
</Location>

Renaming a printer

jenny — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:58:12 -0700

Occasionally, CUPS will magically choose a printer name for you that you didn't specify and don't like, and then not give you the option to change it. Fortunately, you can fix this by editing the config file:

sudo vi /etc/cups/printers.conf

Locate the offending line, eg:

<Printer Printing_Protocol>
...
</Printer>

...and change it to something more palatable:

<Printer Canon-i960>
...
</Printer>

Restart CUPS:

/etc/init.d/cupsys restart