OS X 10.5 client and NON-OS X CUPS server: adding printers, solved

Thanks for your help.

Kyle

Christian,

Thanks for your help, too.

Kyle

Unfortunately I'm having no luck.

My printer is attached (by USB) to an old iMac running Panther. It is easily found by another machine running Tiger, but not by my laptop that's running Leopard (both connected wirelessly).

I have tried the hints here and the similar hints e.g. at <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306984>: that is, add "BrowseProtocols all" to the config file (and infinite variations on this theme). The browser interface to CUPS is particularly convenient.

But my laptop still fails to see the shared printer. Any ideas why it isn't working?

I've got a problem now. I tried editing the printer conf file via the localhost631 link. I must have screwed something up because now when I click on Print & Fax it gives me the beach ball and I have to force quit.

When I open Terminal to try and edit via sudo, I keep getting an audible error tone and this message:

"Dec 6 14:02:48 host172 /usr/sbin/cupsd[367]: Unable to read configuration file
'/private/etc/cups/cupsd.conf' - exiting! "

How do I fix? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

I really need some help with this one guys - please!

Perhaps you should "Reset printing system" as Dell described on 29th October above.

I can't - that requires the ability to get into the Print & Fax preference pane which as stated above, I'm unable to do.

Any other suggestions? It's driving me crazy.

Console.app shows me this:

12/10/07 1:04:23 PM com.apple.launchd[85] ([0x0-0x1d01d].com.apple.iWork.Numbers[173]) Exited: Terminated
12/10/07 1:04:27 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd[230]) Exited with exit code: 1
12/10/07 1:04:27 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
12/10/07 1:04:37 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd[234]) Exited with exit code: 1
12/10/07 1:04:37 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
12/10/07 1:04:47 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd[239]) Exited with exit code: 1

Hi YoungGoGetter,
first of all try to look at permissions of cups.conf file. It can be easy done typing this into terminal app:

ls -l /etc/cups/

you should get something like that:

amfis$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 2042 27 Sep 04:48 apple.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 2997 27 Sep 04:48 apple.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 2614 29 Sep 04:49 cupsd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 2614 29 Sep 04:49 cupsd.conf.default
drwxr-xr-x 2 root _lp 68 29 Sep 04:49 interfaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 4528 29 Sep 04:49 mime.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 6298 29 Sep 04:49 mime.types
drwxr-xr-x 2 root _lp 68 29 Sep 04:49 ppd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root _lp 167 29 Sep 04:49 snmp.conf


then you should see if there is any permission changes.

Also there is one backup file called cups.conf.default. If you can't do anything, you can copy it over and you get fresh new copy of your cups.conf file by typing:

1. sudo -s
2. cd /etc/cups/
3. mv cups.conf.default cups.conf
4. Make some changes and save it.

Hope it helps.

P.S. Make sure that you are in the right place of you system tree. As I mentioned above, your cups.conf is in /private/etc/cups

I was having no luck with the solutions proposed here. It turned out that my firewall was set to "Allow only essential services". Switching to a less strict option "Set access..." fixed the problem. Clearly the firewall blocks some CUPS messages.

Message was edited by: Lawrence C Paulson

Hi i can't seem to get my ibook with leopard 10.5.1 to printer using my printer on my windows network. I can see the printer in the setup using the windows option but when i try to print all i get is printer is not responding make sure printer is on or properly connected. I used to get /usr/libexec/cups/backend/smb failed.\

Any ideas on why it wont connect to print my two windows systems will no problem

having the same problem with my macpro and can't connect to a windows shared printer. any ideas?

I found this page:

https://thecave.homeunix.org/reference/mdns_printer.php

which explains how to get the avahi mDNS daemon on Linux to advertise the shared printers so that unmodified Macs can find them: create an /etc/avahi/services/printer.service file and restart avahi. I haven't tried the result on a Mac yet, but it looks like it should work.

IMO CUPS ought to be publishing the standard mDNS service advertisement in addition to the legacy CUPS-to-CUPS printer browsing advertisement, but apparently it's not doing that yet. Now that Apple has taken over the ownership of CUPS, I can imagine that must be somewhat of a priority to them. Then we could expect that newer Linux distros would start to work again as print servers, without such manual tweaks on either end.

ecloud, I was hoping this would not be the case. I have been searching high and low to figure out why CUPS in 10.5 did not expose the bonjour records for its printers.

I downloaded the *Bonjour Browser* from http://www.tildesoft.com/Programs.html and I saw that my iMac with 10.5 did not expose a printing service. I tried fiddling with the firewall, printer settings and even with cups directly (web interface and command line) to see if I could get the bonjour records exposed.

Since I have a linux box I played around with avahi (which is conveniently what I searched for) while trying to figure this whole thing out. Here's what I got out of avahi (similar to what Bonjour Browser gave me):
amul@mansion:~$ avahi-browse -rat
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress Microsoft Windows Network local
+ eth0 IPv4 iTunes Ctrl93F631ADAE25B367 iTunes Remote Control local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress iTunes Audio Access local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress_PW Digital Photo Sharing local
+ eth0 IPv4 amul@Fortress iChat Presence local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress VNC Remote Access local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress Apple File Sharing local
+ eth0 IPv4 001124032D2D@MusicHouse AirTunes Remote Audio local
+ eth0 IPv4 MusicHouse Apple AirPort local
+ eth0 IPv4 mansion [00:1a:92:e3:d7:5b] Workstation local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress SSH Remote Terminal local
+ eth0 IPv4 mansion ssh SSH Remote Terminal local
+ eth0 IPv4 Fortress SFTP File Transfer local
+ eth0 IPv4 mansion sftp SFTP File Transfer local
+ eth0 IPv4 mansion http Web Site local
+ eth0 IPv4 DI-524 http Web Site local
*cut for brevity*

mansion.local is the Linux box and Fortress.local is the iMac.

So created a service file for CUPS on the linux box:
amul@mansion:/etc/avahi/services$ cat cups.service
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">Linux exported Bonjour CUPS for Fortress</name>
<service protocol="ipv4">
<host-name>Fortress.local</host-name>
<type> ipp.tcp.</type>
<port>631</port>
</service>
</service-group>
note that I specifically set ipv4 instead of any in the protocol field. The discussion forum kills the tab spacing.

re-running avahi-browse yields this extra:
+ eth0 IPv4 Linux exported Bonjour CUPS for Fortress Internet Printer local
= eth0 IPv4 Linux exported Bonjour CUPS for Fortress Internet Printer local
hostname = [Fortress.local]
address = [192.168.4.134]
port = [631]
txt = ["org.freedesktop.Avahi.cookie=952232980"]

Ok, so avahi and *Bonjour Browser* see the printing service. Yup, the "Default" option for adding a printer shows *Linux exported Bonjour CUPS for Fortress*, but I'm not sure if the service description is complete enough for me to make a connection. I'll give it a go in a few days when I get time to play with it from my powerbook. ... I'm impatient, I checked and it does not. The URL is of the form *mdns://Linux exported Bonjour CUPS for Fortress. ipp.tcp.local* with the spaces escaped with %20. I'm guessing that there is more to figure out.

Anyone else want to try getting something to report CUPS via Apple's mDNSResponder?
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponderHelper.plist
Don't seem to give me much.

Worse Than Failure! Seriously. The only way I got around this problem with by LPD (under the IP printing options using the same names as on the host for the queues) with Fortress.local as the destination IP.