I generally use my MacBook (running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) at work and it is essential for me to be able to print documents on my network printers attached to a Linux CUPS server (running CentOS Linux 5.3.)
What needs to be done on the Mac OS X Leopard computer
For some reason, Leopard cannot see printers shared by CUPS by default (it only sees Bonjour printers.) To rectify this, open a terminal and type:
sudo vi /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
and add “BrowseProtocols all” so that the file looks like this:
# Enable printer sharing and shared printers. Browsing On BrowseOrder allow,deny BrowseAllow all BrowseAddress @LOCAL BrowseProtocols all DefaultAuthType Basic <Location /> # Allow shared printing... Order allow,deny Allow @LOCAL </Location>
Then restart the CUPS daemon running on the Mac with
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.cups.cupsd.plist sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.cups.cupsd.plist
What needs to be done on the Linux server
Modify /etc/cups/cupsd.conf so that its beginning somewhat looks like this:
# Share local printers on the local network. Browsing On BrowseOrder allow,deny BrowseAddress @LOCAL DefaultAuthType Basic <Location /> # Allow shared printing... Order allow,deny Allow @LOCAL </Location>
and restart the CUPS server with one of:
/etc/init.d/cups restart /etc/init.d/cupsd restart
and everything should work from there. Go on your Mac and add your Linux printers in the usual way.
One observation I made
Printing generally works great but sometimes stop working when either the Mac or the Linux server are updated. What happens is that, during the update, the CUPS configuration (/etc/cups/cupsd.conf) gets slightly changed to something much more restrictive for security reasons (i.e. network printing is disabled.) I guess this is because both the Apple and Linux people think that it’s better be prudent than sorry especially in our era of fully opened Wifi network.
You’ve been warned :-)
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