CUPS network printing - SUCCESS

[N. Pauli]

On Sun, 27 Feb, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> On 2005-02-24, N  Pauli <npauli at st-johns.org.uk> wrote:
> > I'm new to using Ubuntu having abandoned Mandrake 10.0 and, before
> > that, having been a longtime user of Debian. All is going swimmingly
> > except that I am having lots of grief setting up CUPS to use printers
> > on the network. Can anyone point me to a guide / how-to that's worked
> > for them. One thing that was good on Mandrake was their gui cups
> > interface.
> 
> Have you tried going to the System menu (possibly named something else
> on Warty -- one of the top left menus) and then going to
> 'Administration' and 'Printing'? I used this last on Debian sarge (I
> think it's the gnome-cups-manager package) and it worked well.
> 
> -Mary`

Dear All,
Thanks for your useful suggestions. I have now solved the problem with your help and so what follows is a report of the problem I was having and its solution.

FIRST THE PROBLEM
Menu Computer -> system configuration -> printing gets me to gnome-cups-configuration which has a tendency to crash and has no help associated with it.

What I am trying to do is print from my linux box on a hp2300 business inkjet which is connected to the network with a Netgear PS101 print server and so has its own ip address (10.0.0.160). In the connection box I put in "ipp://10.0.0.160:9100/ipp/" (or "http://10.0.0.160:9100/ipp/") and for drivers have a choice of a "Postscript (suggested)" or "hpijs".

If I then print a test page or use an application to print in all cases the result is the same. I get a page printed off with the following on it:

POST /ipp/ HTTP/1.1
Content-Length: 282
Content-Type: application/ipp
Host: 10.0.0.160


there then follows a line of of partly overprinted text and characters.

NOW THE SOLUTION
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=17240 as suggested by doitashimashite suggests bypassing the gnome-cups-manager and dealing directly with http://localhost:631/admin.

The instructions given there worked a treat and so I have taken the liberty of quoting them verbatim:

<< from http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=17240 >>

I would suggest to do your printer administration over the Cups Web Interface instead of the default gnome-cups-manager.

First, for better printer drivers, start Synaptic, enable the universe repository and install the following packages:

cupsys-driver-gimpprint
cupsys-driver-gimpprint-data

Then, open a terminal (right mouse click on desktop) and execute the following command:

sudo adduser cupsys shadow

This is needed because the printer administration over the web interface is by default disabled: the cups deamon needs to read /etc/shadow and therefore the user cupsys should be added to the group shadow.

Now open a web browser (any web browser) and open the URL

http://localhost:631/

and there you are.

If it doesn't work right away, it should after a reboot.

<< end from >>

All I would add is that your system needs to re-read /etc/shadow before these changes can take effect and the reboot is the most convenient way of achieving that so don't skip it.

The only other significant thing I did myself was to uncomment the line:
# Port 631
in the Network Options section of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and in the same file in the Security Options added (on a line of its own)
Allow 10.0.0.160
to the sub-section starting <Location />

Hope this helps others.

Nigel

-- 
Nigel Pauli
Network Manager
St. John's School, Northwood