# Shared CUPS printers not showing?

## The_Great_Sephiroth

OK  last question before I am done. I spent the past hour or so on this one issue. I have added some new printers to a print-server. They are all connected via USB. The server CUPS service has them setup and working. I enabled sharing in CUPS and checked the "Share this printer" checkbox when setting them up. However, my clients cannot detect them. There are no firewalls in place for this. The server is running the cupsd service. The client runs cups-browsed which starts cupsd. When I list detected printers it shows nothing. Same subnet, they can ping and SSH into each other, but this isn't working. When I go to modify the printers the shared checkbox is checked. What am I missing?

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## ian.au

This is usually pretty easy to do. What do you have in 

```
/etc/cups/client.conf
```

 on the client machines?

Does 

```
lpstat -a
```

 from the clients return the printer you're expecting to find?

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## The_Great_Sephiroth

The client configuration contains only one line.

```

ServerName /run/cups/cups.sock

```

I assume I need to set this to the FQDN or IP or the server? Wouldn't this mean that the print queue is then the server itself?

*UPDATE*

That did it. Thanks for the pointer. I did not realize I had to do it that way. The next question is, what about locally attached printers? If I just set the queue to the print server, how do I do local printers also?

*UPDATE*

OK, so "lpstat -a" shows the printers attached to the print server, but when I go into the workstation web interface on port 631 I do not see them and cannot add them. I must still be missing something.

*UPDATE*

OK, more issues. After realizing I could see the printers listed in the local CUPS web interface, I restarted the workstation. When it came up, I got "Bad file descriptor" from lpstat and I had two RSS feeds listed in the CUPS web interface. I removed the RSS feeds to no avail, so I set the client.conf back to the default and not lpstat works, but no printers. I am completely confused and lost.

I keep getting "{notify_recipient_name}" and "/" as subscriptions in the web interface each time I restart CUPS now. What the heck is going on?

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## ian.au

I'll try some guesswork, but it would help if you posted the steps you took to get where you are and the content of the config files you edited, you know?

Firstly, if you have enabled USB_PRINTER in the kernel you will have problems, so 

```
grep -i usb_printer /usr/src/linux/.config
```

 and make sure that isn't set on any of the machines (clients or server) it's pretty unlikely you have a device that needs it (you'd know if you did) - similarly ensure cups has been emerged with ++usb flag maybe show 

```
equery u net-print/cups
```

 so readers can see what you've configured on emerge.

If all that is good, but you have problems accessing network printers through the cups interface, and assuming you have added the users who need to print to the lp group, and added your admin user to lpadmin group - what do you have in your /etc/cups/cupsd.conf? Have you allowed access from the local network? If you're still having problems post that file here.

You will need to put your server back into client.conf on the clients for anything to work from the server. The server will be the location for the queue of printers it is serving. I don't quite parse your question 'what about locally attached printers?' You'd use ie. ipp://hostname/printers/printername to connect to printers on the server, if the client also has a locally attached printer you'd set that up to print by adding the local printer to cups there.

Hope that helps. It's midnight here and I won't be around much longer, hopefully you get it sorted.

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## The_Great_Sephiroth

I believe I have it sorted. I had to change "Listen localhost:631" to "Listen *:631" and then change the client.conf to point to the server. It has been working ever since. I just cannot believe there's no detailed guide to this. I struggled all weekend but I do intend on writing a guide for this.

Oh and I never build the USB printer support in my kernels. It is outdated unless I am mistaken.

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