CUPS, Ubuntu
One third of my life as a human is spent sleeping. Of the remaining two thirds, half is spent configuring printers for Linux on my home LAN.
Having continuously run Linux since 1991, I can say this: printing under Linux or any Unix is harder than it should be. After 35 years of Unix, and 15 of Linux, you’d think this would be easier than it is. You’d be wrong.
Take CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. And take Ubuntu, Linux for Human Beings (I love Linux as much as Ubuntu does, but get real). Why does CUPS on Ubuntu, or any consumer Linux, come with authentication enabled? Linux is hard enough for humans to install and run without messing with authentication for setting up a printer. Aren’t I already authorized to run sudo to admin my Ubuntu box? Is that implied trust not good enough for me to configure printing? Guess not. CUPS authentication notwithstanding, you’ll be doing good to get that test page to print.
Backup your original cups configuration in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Replace it with this one, allowing for network numbering differences, for cups 1.2, and restart cupsys
BrowseAddress @LOCAL
BrowseAllow from 192.168.0.0/24
ConfigFilePerm 0600
DefaultCharset notused
Listen 127.0.0.1:631
LogLevel info
Printcap /etc/printcap
ServerAdmin yeremailaddress
DefaultPolicy p
<Policy p>
<Limit all>
AuthType None
Allow From 127.0.0.1
</Limit>
</Policy>
This allows you to add and modify printers without all that authentication nonnsense for home networks. And no, I’m not going to add myself to some magic cups group for alternative auth purposes.
Lessee, where was I before I blew two hours on this problem?
Update: In a comment, Marc pointed out esr’s note on cups config. Like Mr. Raymond, I should point out that I appreciate all the hard work that’s gone into cups and linux in general. You always hurt the ones you love.
[tags]cups,ubuntu[/tags]
Agreed. I have quite a bit of experience with Unix and Linux but it took me several hours to get my Canon i950 going and then a couple more to share it over the network via IPP to a couple of Windows boxes. I didn’t even attempt Samba.
Eric Raymond has a CUPS horror story as well.
Marc
July 1, 2006 at 9:16 am
Yeah. This was the *second* two hours I spent on this problem. The first two was when I installed Ubuntu Breezy Badger a few months ago, which uses a earlier version of cups. Meaning my two hours of getting a real simple cups config working then and thereunder was of limited use in this go-around with Dapper Drake. And when you encounter print problems, the wise man knows in that instant that he should stop his work and just accept that the next two hours will be spent troubleshooting. Skip the anger and denial phases and go straight to acceptance.
Here’s another one: I spent an hour figuring out that enscript under Drake uses a default A4 paper size. lpr would print fine, lp would print fine, and enscript would seem to print fine – but then nothing out of the printer. Badger did not have this problem, so you could imagine my befuddlement when I encountered this.
But printing is not the only area of massive frustration in using PCs: include PC audio as well. To this day, I dread printing and sound issues – after, what, 25 years of the PC compatible clone? But that’s another story altogether.
ae6rt
July 1, 2006 at 9:42 am
ae6rt: I am having the same issue, can you please tell me how you fixed the cups problem after the dapper drake upgrade? Please save me couple hours
Prasad
July 4, 2006 at 5:01 pm
On restarting cups I got an child exit 15 error. I do agree that not being able to setup the printer on the parallel port in 2006 is unforgiveable.
thanks
Judson Jennings
November 19, 2006 at 11:38 am
Still trying to use a parallel printer in 2007 is just as silly as the cups issues mentioned here. Come on, throw that fossil away and get a real printer before you complain that old stuff doesnt work with new stuff. My USB printer worked within 1 minute, i started up the gnome cups manager, it detected the printer and it worked after clicking a few next buttons. This was under Ubuntu feisty though, so maybe things have improved since 2006…
Mephisto
September 27, 2007 at 5:21 am
The original CUPS issue was related to authenticating into the CUPS admin server, which is independent of printer type. And, yes, CUPS config can and has changed between Ubuntu (and other OS perhaps) distributions. I hope things are better in the latest version of Ubuntu, and if they’re not, it’s not fatal. It’s just inconvenient to have to revisit configs that change with OS distribution.
ae6rt
September 27, 2007 at 5:52 am