Network printing

[colyn]

This is my first post here but I'm not exactly new to Linux.

I have a desktop with Kubuntu 10.04 installed and running good. My HP printer is installed and running on this machine with no problems. This is my server. I also have a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop with Kubuntu 10.04 setup and running good also.

When I bootup the laptop in order to print to the printer I have to 'sudo service cups start' in order to see the printer on the laptop and print to the server printer.

Is there a way to have cups startup when I boot up the laptop?

Other than this issue everything else works fine including network sharing.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Network printing

You say you have set up a network, but I can't tell from your description how it is set up.

You have an HP printer attached to a desktop computer running Kubuntu 10.4. How is the printer connected to the desktop? Parallel port? Do you have two NICs plugged into the desktop and are running masquerading with the laptop connected to the second nic?

[colyn]

Re: Network printing

......

Setup is through a router with both computers connected to the router. I also have samba sharing on both computers which allows me to access shared folder between both computers.

The printer is USB. Once I restart cups on the laptop I can print to the server connected printer with no problems through the network. The desktop starts cups on bootup with no problems but the laptop does not.

So your printer is connected to your desktop USB port and your desktop has to be on to use the printer. What if you connected your printer to a wireless printer server and gave it a static IP address below the lowest IP address dispensed by your router so you would only need to have the router and wireless print server on to use the printer from the laptop? That's how my network printer is set up.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Network printing

I wonder if this is network related? Meaning cups startup is tied to network startup and since you're on a laptop maybe cups isn't detecting the network up at boot.

IMO this would happen if you're using wireless, but shouldn't if you're on a wired connection and doing a power-up start (rather than a wake-up from suspend)

Look in your log files (start with /var/log/messages) and search for cups messages. If you're comfortable with the CLI, open a terminal and type cat /var/log/messages | grep cups and see what's up.

One work around would be to cause cups to manually restart after the network is up.

Try this: Create a script in /etc/network/if-up.d/ to manually restart cups.

#!/bin/sh
# File : /etc/network/if-up.d/cups
# Date : 14/6/10
# script to start the cupsd daemon on boot

service cups restart

and make it executable. I named it cups in the example above but any name that you like should work.

[colyn]

Re: Network printing

This seems to work. I'll keep a check on it to see what happens.

Thanks