When I just wanted to install the shared network printer on my wife’s new MacBook Pro, I was pretty much at a loss. The printer just didn’t want to show up in the list of available printers, even though I can see and use it without any problems from my laptop (also a MacBook Pro). Also, there shouldn’t be any problems between the printing system of Ubuntu 10.04 (which the printer is connected to) and that of Mac OS X, because they are absolutely identical: CUPS, which is even developed by Apple.
After a lot of trial and error, I finally found the solution (again): the default settings of CUPS on OS X have the search for other printers via the CUPS protocol deactivated (for whatever reason) and thus it does not find the shard printer of the Ubuntu system. It’s quite easy to change this setting, though not via the system preferences, but via the CUPS web interface which can be found under http://localhost:631/.
On the start page click on the ”Administration“ tab. On this page unfold the options under ”Advanced“, found under ”Server“/”Server Settings“. Then you just have to check ”CUPS“ next to ”Protocols“ and save the new settings by clicking on ”Change Settings“. CUPS will ask you about a user name and password, which usually just is your own user name and password you also use to log in to you computer.
When everything is done, you should now see all printers shared via CUPS in your network in the printer settings dialog, even without explicitly adding them using the ”+“ symbol. Should the printers not show up immediately, you can try clicking on the ”+“ symbol. The automatic search should then cause the printers to show up and you can just close the window again.
I hope this spares someone a lot of trial and error. In fact, it is a shame, that those 100% compatible systems appear to be incompatible because of such a poorly made default setting.
Printers shared via CUPS by other computers are not found by default.
To change the setting you have to use the CUPS web interface found under http://localhost:631/.
You only have to activate the CUPS protocol for the search of shared printers in the ”Administration“ tab.
Now, all shared CUPS-printers of your network are displayed automatically.
This entry was posted on September 17th, 2010 at 2:26 PM. It is filed under General and is tagged with CUPS, printing, mac os x, network, ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
