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 CUPS on an Ubuntu installation.
Prerequisuites
- CUPS
- Avahi
- A CUPS compatible printer
- iPhone > 3GS, iPad, iPod touch > 3rd Genration
- Wi-Fi Network
Configuration
CUPS
There is very little that needs to be done in CUPS to make this work the heavy lifting is on the Avahi side of things. But in order to print from an iDevice a few things need to be checked and if required change the configuration.
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://localhost: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.
If the printer in question is not shared a quick lpadmin magic will correct that.
lpadmin -p <PrinterName> -o printer-is-shared=true
cupsd.conf
Most likely the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf needs a bit of massaging.
On Ubuntu some people report the following line has to be added:
ServerAlias *
It is also necessary to ensure host from the Wi-Fi network can print to the printer.
<Policy WiFi>
<Limit Send-Document Send-URI Hold-Job Release-Job Restart-Job Purge-Jobs Set-Job-Attributes
Create-Job-Subscription Renew-Subscription Cancel-Subscription Get-Notifications
Reprocess-Job Cancel-Current-Job Suspend-Current-Job Resume-Job CUPS-Move-Job
Cancel-Job CUPS-Authenticate-Job CUPS-Get-Document>
Order allow,deny
Allow from 10.10.10.0/24
</Limit>
</Policy>
Where Allow from should be the IP Address of your Wi-Fi network.
Avahi
Avahi requires a service file under /etc/avahi/services that is where the airprint-generate.py script comes into play. Run the script as root
sudo python airprint-generate.py
This will generate files called AirPrint-<PrinterName>.service. Copy these files to the Avahi services directory.
sudo cp AirPrint-<PrinterName>.service /etc/avahi/services
Avahi will pick up the new service on the fly without a restart.
Time to check if the configuration worked. On the same machine punch in the following command.
avahi-browse _universal._sub._ipp._tcp + wlan0 IPv6 AirPrint <PrinterName> @ <hostname> Internet Printer local + wlan0 IPv4 AirPrint <PrinterName> @ <hostname> Internet Printer local
The IPv6 line will only show up if you have it enabled.
iDevice
Only for debugging purposes install the free Bonjour Browser. Use it to see if your iDevice can see the Avahi print services.
To check the configuration go to say the Mail app open a message press the arrow button to show the options. Click on print and the printer should come up with the name specified in the Avahi service file.