Sunday 9 April 2017

Configure your printer on Raspberry Pi

Uses were getting printout from one of locally configured desktop machine which was old running on Ubuntu unfortunately had hardware issues and finally gave a thought for it to RIP. :)
Later, thought about the low cost and tried using Raspberry Pi which acts like a print server, after installing drivers it was still not able to detect printer. I have prepared this tutorial on how to configure print services in Raspberry Pi.

What's needed ?

- 1 Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Board installed with Raspbian OS
- 1 USB based printer connected to Pi board.

This is how it looks like :



Let's start :

Update your repository
# sudo apt-get update

First, in order to link your printer with Raspberry Pi, install CUPS. 
# sudo apt-get install cups 

Once the installation is completed, add usergroup that has access to printer queue. usergroup by default would be 'lpadmin' Since by default user for Rasbian user would be 'pi' add it.
#sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

Configure to enable remote editing for CUPS, rest all can be completed via web browser by pointing your http://localhost:port 
the one in "Green" are to be added and in "red" to be commented. 

#sudo vim /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
# Only listen for connections from the local machine.
#Listen localhost:631 { Comment this line and add below line }
Port 631
Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock

# Restrict access to the server...
<Location />
  Order allow,deny
  Allow @local
</Location>

# Restrict access to the admin pages...
<Location /admin>
  Order allow,deny
  Allow @local
</Location>

# Restrict access to configuration files...
<Location /admin/conf>
  AuthType Default
  Require user @SYSTEM
  Order allow,deny
  Allow @local
</Location>

Restart your CUPS service
#sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

In your Raspberry Pi's browser point to http://localhost:631 and click on "Adding Printers and Classes"


Click on "Add Printer" in Administration Panel, select your detected printer and continue and if you get warnings about site certificate ignore it, on which it prompts for username and password of the account you added to 'lpadmin' group earlier in this post.

After logging in, you'll be presented with a list of discovered printers(local or networked). Select the printer you wish to add to your "Pi" 



After continue, you will be prompted to select specific driver you want for your printer. scroll until you see a model number that matches yours. 


​The last configuration step is to Set Default Options and Congrats you have added your system to CUPS. 

Try to display installed printers
#lpstat -a 

Once all are fine, you could issue a print command. 

Thank you.