Can't duplex print in 12.04

David Fletcher dave at thefletchers.net
Sun Jan 13 21:41:10 UTC 2013


On Fri, 2013-01-11 at 09:39 +0100, Patrick Asselman wrote:
> On 2013-01-10 23:57, David Fletcher wrote:

> (I'm not sure this is possible, but...)
> 
> How about this:
> * install CUPS on the server and make sure it prints OK to the printer
> * share the printer on the server same as you have always done
> * point all the other desktops on the network to the server, same as 
> you have always done

> Best regards,
> Patrick Asselman
> 

Having spent most of another whole day (in between doing a rather superb
barbecued knuckle of lamb!) fooling around with this, I think I might
have now solved it. I'm now going to see if I can repeat the feat on the
physical server whilst I document it here, for my own future reference
and to help anybody else who might have problems......

As I said I might do a few days ago, I first installed 10.04 Server
(because that's I'm using on the physical server) as a VM on my desktop,
then had to figure out how to make it accessible via ssh etc. from
outside. Answer:- tell VirtualBox to give it a bridged rather than NAT
network interface which I did before running the installer. Get it
installed, updated etc. then find the DHCP assignments on the router
admin page. That's what I did anyway.

So, here goes:- "Installing the Brother HL-3040CN under CUPS on a
headless Ubuntu server 10.04"

Do the setup instructions in the Brother manual to take out the packing
materials, insert the toner etc. and make sure it prints the self test
page.

Use the front panel of the printer to give it a fixed IPv4 address. The
printer says it also supports IPv6 but I'm not yet provided with it by
my ISP so not relevant yet.

Connect the printer to the LAN, make sure you can ping it then log in
with a web browser. You can then use the web admin tool set the gateway
and network mask etc.

Obtain hl3040cncupswrapper-1.1.2-1.i386.deb and
hl3040cnlpr-1.1.2-1.i386.deb from the Brother drivers site and scp them
into a directory on the administrator's account on the server.

Now ssh into the server administrator account.

sudo aptitude install cups

use a text editor to alter /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to enable remote
administration, then
sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart
and make sure you can log in with a web browser on port 631.

Now, install the driver:-
I like using gdebi to install downloaded .deb files so,

sudo aptitude install gdebi-core

If you tell it to install plain gdebi it wants to also install dozens of
other files with seemingly megabytes of gnome which isn't what I want on
my headless server but gdebi-core only installs itself and
python-debian.

Now, cd to wherever you put the driver installers and FIRST
sudo gdebi hl3040cnlpr-1.1.2-1.i386.deb
THEN
sudo gdebi hl3040cncupswrapper-1.1.2-1.i386.deb

and if you now use the web browser management facility you should find a
printer queue called HL3040CN, which is of no use as things stand
because CUPS seems to think it's a USB printer which it isn't, so just
delete the queue.

Now, from the CUPS administration tab, use the Find New Printers button.
DO NOT use the Add Printer button - things did not work out properly for
me with this choice.

Find New Printers takes you to a page called Available Printers where
CUPS has discovered your HL-3040CN on the network where you can press
the Add This Printer button. Do so.

On the next page edit the location to something meaning full to you and
tick "Share This Printer". I leave everything else alone.

Click Continue.

Now, you have to select the correct printer type for the queue you are
creating. This is where things get a little silly because we are going
to supply a ppd file, only you can't get at the ppd file you need
because it's on the headless server in /usr/share/cups/model/Brother/ I
didn't have a problem with this because the drivers are already
installed on my netbook and every other machine I've been screwing
around with so I can use the web browser to drill down to the required
file on the local machine that I'm sitting at. Otherwise you may need to
scp the file off the server and onto your local machine.

Anyway, however you've gained access to a copy of the file
brother_hl3040cn_printer_en.ppd, in the web browser click the Choose
File button and select it.

Click the Add printer button, which takes you to the default options
page. I set the default paper size to A4, left everything else alone,
and clicked the Set Default Options button.

Now, you ought to have a working printer but for me it didn't work yet,
at least on the virtual server it didn't. Look at the connection
information which for me is
lpd://BRN001BA9D5E4AC/BINARY_P1

I'm going to change the BRN001BA9D5E4AC part of the string to the fixed
IP address we set right at the beginning, so select the printer and go
into Modify Printer from the Administration button. Select select the
LPD/LPR Host or Printer option and continue. In the edit window alter
the connection so that in my case it becomes
lpd://192.168.2.10/BINARY_P1
and click continue.

Make sure the Share This Printer option is still ticked and continue
again.

Select the same ppd file again and click the Modify Printer button at
the bottom to finish.

In theory, all you now need to do is on each of your desktops/laptops,
browse localhost:631 and make sure the option to use other shared
printers on the network is ticked, and the new Brother printer should
"Just Work" in Libre Office. I only printed a single page in black just
now, from my netbook via the WiFi but it WORKED FOR ME.

Wow, what a struggle!

Now, let's see if I can remove the driver from the computers that don't
now need it.

My original intention was to have the printer plugged into the USB
socket on the server, but I might now prefer to have it networked for
web browser access to its administration facility. It's a whole lot
easier than the front panel. For anybody who really needs to prevent
users going in directly through the network rather than the server,
there is a firewall sort of facility to stop them, that can be set up by
the administrator through the web browser.

Hope all of this is of use to somebody else. If nothing else, it's
documented for myself next time I need to set up a print server.

Time for a large beer methinks.

Dave






More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list