Revision as of 21:26, 9 November 2011

Adding a USB Printer

You can easily add a USB printer to your core or to an MD to share over the network, even with Windows PCs.

Installing the Printer on a PC

• Connect the USB printer to the PC (in my case, I chose to connect to the core so the printer would be in my server closet).
• Using LinuxMCE, navigate to the KDE desktop.
• Navigate to System settings and select the "Printers" icon. This should bring up the Printer System Settings menu.
• Click on the dropdown for "Add", and select "Add Printer/Class". This will bring up the Add Printer Wizard, click "Next"

• you may experience a known bug with KDE here. Sometimes the radio button where you would select "Local printer(parallel,serial,USB)" will be unavailable/grayed out. If you know that your USB ports and Printer are both functioning properly, try using this command from a terminal.

 cd /etc/cups
 sudo cp cupsd.conf.default cupsd.conf
 sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

• Select the radio button for "Local Printer", then select your printer from the list.

• KDE has quite alot of printer drivers already available in the OS, so you should be able to select your printer Brand and Model in the next screen.

• Once you do so, it will bring up a list of possible drivers that you can select and test to see which one works best. Once you are done, click "Finish".

You have now installed your USB printer to this PC.

Share Printer on Local Network

You can now share your newly installed printer with other PCs on your network.

• Navigate back to System Settings and select the "Printers" icon.
• Select the drop down for "Print Server", then select "Share Printers on Local Network". Click "Enable Sharing" on the popup.

Adding Shared printer to a Windows PC

Now that you have your printer installed and set to share on your network, you will need to show windows how to get to the printer. My windows laptop running Vista would not automatically locate this printer, so this is how I set it up.

• On your Windows machine go to Start>Control Panel>Printers and Faxes
• Select "Add a printer"
• Click "Next"
• Select the radio dial for network printer and click "Next"
• Click the radio for "Connect to this Printer" and fill in the blank. You must make sure to add the port :631 after your server IP address.

• ex. \\192.168.80.1:631\printer\'what_you_named_your_printer. You will be asked for your LinuxMCE password and it should connect to the printer. After that, you will just have to tell Windows what type of printer it is and specify the driver and you should be set.Brachytherapy

Adding a shared printer to an MD or Kubuntu-based PC

• This is pretty straightforward using the KDE printer wizard. Feel free to fill this section in; if not, I will get to it later.

Currently in 810, smb.conf is stripped. Follow these instructions to get the printer to show up on Windows networks

Add to GLOBAL section:

########## Printing ##########
# If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
# than setting them up individually then you'll need this
   load printers = yes
# lpr(ng) printing. You may wish to override the location of the
# printcap file
;   printing = bsd
;   printcap name = /etc/printcap
# CUPS printing.  See also the cupsaddsmb(8) manpage in the
# cupsys-client package.
   printing = cups
   printcap name = cups

Add AFTER ## END : InternalStorageDevices"

[printers]
   comment = All Printers
   browseable = no
   path = /var/spool/samba
   printable = yes
   guest ok = no
   read only = yes
   create mask = 0700
# Windows clients look for this share name as a source of downloadable
# printer drivers
[print$]
   comment = Printer Drivers
   path = /var/lib/samba/printers
   browseable = yes
   read only = yes
   guest ok = no
# Uncomment to allow remote administration of Windows print drivers.
# You may need to replace 'lpadmin' with the name of the group your
# admin users are members of.
# Please note that you also need to set appropriate Unix permissions
# to the drivers directory for these users to have write rights in it
;   write list = root, @lpadmin