blog/_posts/2018-03-05-cups-simple-shared-printer.md

title	tags	updated	description
Add a remote shared printer with a couple of shell commands	printer CUPS share	2018-03-05 13:00	How to add a remote shared printer within CUPS using a couple of shell commands

If you happen to have a USB printer without WiFi and a computer that will act as server, then you can use CUPS to share it.

Once you setup CUPS to allow non-localhost connections, on port 631, you can use the web interface for the configuration. At the time, I tried to add the printer from a client computer using the web interface and selecting the driver, just like I did on the server. I got a Filter failed error. Basically, I think that the problem was that the file got through the printer filters twice (see $ man 7 filter). To avoid this, the printer needs to be added as raw from a CLI shell:

local_printer_name="Printer"
server_hostname="192.168.0.1"

# This must be the exact same name
# as the one reported on the server.
remote_printer_name="Remote_printer"

description="Remote printer"
location="Connected to the server"

lpadmin -p ${local_printer_name} -v \
ipps://${server_hostname}:631/printers/${remote_printer_name} \
-D "${description}" -L "${location}" -E

Please note that lpadmin needs root privileges.

The only thing to do is to edit the variables appropriately and then do a printer test.

Recently I experienced encryption certificate problems using ipps:// but everything worked fine using the plain ipp:// protocol. If you are in a trusted network this shouldn't be a problem.

You can now set the new printer as the default system one:

lpoptions -E -d ${local_printer_name}

Just like lpadmin, lpoptions also needs root privileges.

In case you need to remove the printer you have to run the following:

lpadmin -r ${local_printer_name}

See $ man 8 lpadmin and $ man 1 lpoptions for all possible parameters.

That's it...

Note

This post is an adaptation of the original one at linuxdifficile