CUPS/AirPrint
The other day I came across an article about AirPrint and wondered if I can share my printer over the WiFi network and print out over the CUPS installation on an Ubuntu installation.
Prerequisuites
- CUPS
- Avahi
- A CUPS compatible printer
- iPhone > 3GS, iPad, iPod touch > 3rd Genration
- Wi-Fi Network
Configuration
Pre-change checks
Printer is working
Before attempting to print from your iDevices it is probably wise to make sure the target printer is properly working locally over CUPS on the local machine. Configuration of the printer in CUPS is beyond the scope of this article tho.
In order to print over the network the printer in question CUPS must share the printer. You can check this with your favorite webbrowser under http://<hostname-or-ip-of-cups-host>:631 or via lpotions command.
lpoptions -p <PrinterName> | grep --color printer-is-shared=
auth-info-required=none [snip] printer-is-accepting-jobs=true printer-is-shared=true [snip]
The lpotions command is putting its whole output on a single line hence I suggest to use the --color option with grep to easily spot the value in question. Obviously the value should be set to true.