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The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), a core component of Mac OS X, is free, open source software that provides a portable and extensible printing system for the Unix-based Internet Printing Protocol (IPP/1.1).
CUPS provides System V- and Berkeley-compatible command-line interfaces and a web-based interface to extensive documentation, status monitoring, and printer administration. You access the web-based administration interface by pointing your web browser to port 631 on the localhost (http://127.0.0.1:631). (To access CUPS from a remote machine, enable Printer Sharing (System Preferences Sharing), and use your machines IP address instead of 127.0.0.1.) The main page of the web-based administrative interface is shown in Figure 6-7. Figure 6-7. CUPS' web-based interface6.2.1. Printing from Remote SystemsCUPS is available on a wide variety of Unix-based systems and makes both the administration and use of shared printers easy. For example, a shared USB printer connected to your Mac is immediately visible to a Solaris-based SUN workstation running CUPS, provided the Solaris machine is on the same subnet (if not, remote users can connect to the printer by supplying your Mac's IP address or hostname). GNOME and KDE, the most popular desktop environments for Linux, have utilities that make it easy to connect to a printer you've shared from your Mac. Before you proceed, you should find out the queue name of your printer, as described in the following steps:
Figure 6-8. Inspecting the properties for an HP OfficeJet6.2.1.1. GNOMETo connect to your Mac's printer from GNOME :
Figure 6-9. The GNOME CUPS Manager6.2.1.2. KDETo connect to your Mac's printer using KDE, launch the KDE Control Panel and choose Peripherals Printers. You may find that your printer is already detected, as shown in Figure 6-13. Depending on whether your Linux system can resolve your Macs hostname properly, this printer may work as-is. Figure 6-10. Adding a new printer under GNOMEFigure 6-11. Specifying the printer's make and modelFigure 6-12. Printing a test page
In our case, it didn't work out of the box. You can follow these steps to add the printer manually:
6.2.1.3. Manual printer configuration (Linux and Unix)You can also configure a CUPS client manually. To add your Mac OS X printer as the default printer, edit /etc/cups/printers.conf on the Linux (or other Unix) machine, and add the following entry, replacing OfficeJet-D135, 192.168.254.150, and officejet_d_series with the appropriate values: <DefaultPrinter OfficeJet-D135> Info OfficeJet-D135 DeviceURI http://192.168.254.150:631/printers/officejet_d_series State Idle Accepting Yes Figure 6-15. Setting the host and portJobSheets none none QuotaPeriod 0 PageLimit 0 KLimit 0 </Printer> If you don't want the printer as the default printer, change DefaultPrinter to Printer. After you've added the entry, stop and restart CUPS on the Linux (or other Unix) machine to load the new printer configuration. 6.2.1.4. Printing from LinuxAfter you get your Mac and its printer to appear in the list, you don't need to do any further configuration. To print from an application such as Firefox, select the Print option from the application's main menu. Your Mac's printer will either appear by name, or show up as something simple like "PostScript/default," as shown in Figure 6-18. Figure 6-16. Choosing the shared printer on your Mac |
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