Jaunty: How to install a USB printer?

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 14 May 2009, Ric Moore wrote:
>On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 14:37 +0300, Willy Hamra wrote:
>> 2009/5/9 Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com>:
>> > On Fri, 2009-05-08 at 08:15 +0000, marc wrote:
>> >> Ric Moore said:
>> >> > But this may shed some light... When I worked at RedHat, I could
>> >> > never get my Ex's printer to work. Darn embarrassing to be on the
>> >> > Help Desk fixing everyone elses printers. We had one whizbang that
>> >> > fired up emacs, had ten terminals with code pouring down the screens
>> >> > like the matrix. Impressed me! Then he started narrowing down the
>> >> > problem to samba not being configured correctly. I'm going she
>> >> > doesn't NEED Samba and I ripped it out. The printer worked right off.
>> >> > Samba was trying to network a printer that hadn't been configured
>> >> > correctly for the system. The cart before the horse, so to speak. You
>> >> > can rip out Samba, after saving config files if you need it or rip it
>> >> > out for good if you don't need it. One less thing in the way.
>> >>
>> >> I'll give that a spin. Thanks.
>> >
>> > Let us know how it works. I later re-installed Samba on her machine and
>> > it picked up on the local printer it found and configured it for use
>> > easily. I guess it needs to be configured locally before the install of
>> > samba. It would be interesting if this was indeed the case. Good Luck!
>> > Ric
>>
>> my samsung ML-1610 works out of the box in jaunty, it got recognized
>> right away and auto-configured while installing jaunty alpha-3 or 4,
>> cant remember from an alternate CD. and in all previous versions,
>> using http://localhost:631 always opens up a CUSP page, and the
>> printer can always be found by the detect new printer functionality,
>> which configures the printer way easier than add a new printer. and
>> yes, my printer is USB as well.
>> can you make sure the printer is detected by the system? i'm no lspci
>> or lsusb or whatever expert, but kinfocenter/USB should point you in
>> the right direction if the printer is seen or not.
>
>Samba will steal it and put permissions to it. I know that one from hard
>experience as I noted. I'd really like to know how this turns out. :)
>Ric
>
That secret is to remove an printers section in the smb.conf.  Nuke it 
totally.  In all machines.

Then in /etc/cups, create this client.conf file, owned by root:lp, with these 
perms:-rw-r--r--
-----------------------------
# Client.conf
ServerName coyote.coyote.den
-----------------------------

And that is all it takes for all the printers located on and attached to this 
machine, to be visible and useable by the unpriviledged user 'gene' on that 
kubuntu-6.06-LTS box that runs my tabletop milling machine.  It even makes 
visible, a brother laser that may be attached to another machine in this 
little home network of mine.  It becomes visible by virtue of being visible to 
this F10 machine.

A very simple, from the cli, 'lpr file', on shop.coyote.den by the user gene, 
followed by a walk to the house from the shop to recycle & refresh the 
contents of my coffee cup, and pickup the printout while I'm there.

IMNSHO, it was a HUGE mistake for *buntu to leave that out even if it was all 
comment telling the curious how to make it work.  That lack has, over the 
years, created several megabytes of questions on this list.  But I have had to 
add it to every *buntu install I've done since 6.06.  Come on guys, maybe 100 
bytes but you can't find room on the CD for it?

Obviously my systems use host files, not dhcp, but I think that might even 
work if done right.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Next, upon a stool, we've a sight to make you drool.
Seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool, keep it cool.
		-- ELP, "Karn Evil 9" (1st Impression, Part 2)