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http://localhost:631/
CUPS 2.2.8

CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system developed by Apple Inc. for macOS® and other UNIX®-like operating systems.
CUPS and the CUPS logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Copyright © 2007-2017 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

This is on a machine running Fedora 29.

This is what I did for my customer who wanted to use only email with no attachments via dial-up.

1. I started with a Knoppix 3.3 Live CD and an old Dell Dimension PC. I installed an Intel 536EP PCI dial-up modem card.
2. In Knoppix, I ran the script to install Knoppix to the hard disk. I chose KDE as the desktop environment.
3. Running Knoppix from hard disk, I downloaded, compiled and installed the Intel536-4.68 kernel driver.
4. Set up KPPP to access the dial-up Internet Service Provider.
5. Set up KMail to access the ISP's POP3 mail server and SMTP outgoing mail server.
6. Checked that the Konqueror web browser/file manager was able to access basic websites.
7. Installed an Epson C62 printer in the CUPS printer manager, which is accessed with Konqueror, using the URL http://localhost:631/
8. In CUPS printer manager, for the Epson C62 I chose Set Printer Options and Color Model: Greyscale.

An alternative to the Intel 536EP PCI card is a standard 56k serial modem, nice to have lights to look at while it is working. This lasted for 7 years with no problems, until replaced because the customer decided to do something else.

You realize there is a embedded web GUI in CUPS, and has been for quite some time? (I was using it 6 years ago, and it wasn't 'new' then). Try checking http://localhost:631/ - that is the URL if you have it enabled.

Only because Apple made it work properly and added a GUI instead of text files that bomb with a misplaced comma or tab.

Wow - you really haven't used linux in the last decade or so, have you?

Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/

You exaggerate the difficulties of setting up a printer using CUPS and a modern Linux distribution. ;-)

I just did a little experiment. I'm sitting in a holiday house borrowed from friends, using my trusty Lenovo laptop running Debian Squeeze. Next to me on the bench is a printer - I've never used it before and it's been covered with a cloth up until the start of the experiment.

I removed the cloth, powered up the printer, and then plugged the USB lead into my laptop. About 10 seconds later a dialogue box appeared on my desktop saying, "A new printer has come into existence. Do you want to use this driver?". I answered yes. It then said, "Do you want to print a test page?" Again I said yes, and shortly afterwards there appeared a perfectly formatted colour test page.

I'm not sure it can be made much easier than this.

John

How on earth would a normal person figure out that printing is on port 631?

One of two ways:

• RTFM.
• Click on the helpful link to http://localhost:631/ that is named 'Printer Setup' and put on your desktop or in a menu by your desktop environment of choice.

Seriously, your complaint makes as much sense as asking 'How on earth would a normal person figure out that you browse the web by running iexplore.exe?'

"Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/"

In the main, that works. However, it should be noted that support for CUPS-HTTP-ADMIN varies from distribution to distribution, and even from version to version.

What I find (seriously) annoying is that if CUPS-HTTP-ADMIN is enabled, it's always defaulted to localhost only. That may be fine for a desktop... but in case no one ever told the CUPS folks (and the folks creating server linux distros), sometimes linux is used on servers.

To that end, here is my own cheat-sheet on getting CUPS-HTTP-ADMIN on the LAN:

# add the following to cupsd.conf

# to the Listen section, attach port 631 to all NICs
Port 631

# place outside of any other sections, enable Web Interface
WebInterface Yes

# place outside of any other sections, disable HTTPS
DefaultEncryption Never

# to <Location />
Allow all

# to <Location /admin>
Allow all

# to <Location /admin/conf>
Allow all

Yes, it's in shorthand. No, it's not super-duper-secure. Because I have yet to see CUPS-HTTP-ADMIN be an actual attack vector. No, this is obviously not for a public facing linux box.

PS, don't forget to open up TCP 631 on whatever firewall is on your linux machine.

Only because Apple made it work properly and added a GUI instead of text files that bomb with a misplaced comma or tab.

Wow - you really haven't used linux in the last decade or so, have you?

Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/
 

Are you serious? How on earth would a normal person figure out that printing is on port 631? I use Linux eight hours a day at work, and for programming I wouldn't use anything else, but even I use a mac when I need things to work. A web server running on a port I would never find is not a reasonable place for a UI most users need to discover.

Only because Apple made it work properly and added a GUI instead of text files that bomb with a misplaced comma or tab.

Wow - you really haven't used linux in the last decade or so, have you?

Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/

You'll find local and network printer search and configuration, default paper and printer settings, print queues, pretty much everything you need, all in a nice pretty gui.

tell them to turn off the Strigi searching in the "Desktop Search" in System Settings

Is that something that's still there in KDE 4.7?

Yes it is. And it's now now even part of Trinity, I.E. the new incarnation of KDE 3. http://trinitydesktop.org/

I thought that KDE4 had improved in its latest iterations.

It has, but it still defaults to having Nepomuk and Strigi both being on and set to index everything in your home directory by default, and storing them in an SQL database using Virtuoso. This ends up taking up about 10% of the space you're currently using in your home directory in the database at ~/.kde/share/apps/nepomuk/repository/main/data/virtuosobackend/soprano-virtuoso.db Then, of course, by defualt it also wants to run MySQL server for Akonadi for storing and index and cache as part of PIM management and store that in ~/.local/share/akonadi/ somewhere, and wants to run another MySQL server process per user that's logged in, too. So if you use "Switch user" and log in as another user, you'll see two copies of MySQL server running -- and it's still like that with KDE 4.7.4.

There's a lot to like in KDE 4 today, but there are still things about it like this that I think are just wrong. Another example: if you right-click on an application in the menu, you can easily add it to the "Favorites" menu, an there are some there by default too. But how do you get something OUT of the Favorites? Well, you just do web searches to find out that you need to edit the text file ~/.kde/share/config/kickoffrc and edit the Favorites list manually. Another: print something, then try to figure out how to see the printer spool in KDE 4. Oops. You need to know to install "printer-applet", and even if you do it's not up to the job; you're better of logging directly into cups via the web interface at http://localhost:631/ than you are with using KDE 4's tools.

KDE 4 still isn't the well-oiled-machine that KDE 3 was. It's nice, it's comfortable, it's even slick, but it's still got some rough edges.

Despite Debian's policy of separating the source-available software from the binary-only software, RMS still doesn't endorse them as free. I think that Debian too is distancing itself from the FSF - they're not making their software GPL3 - particularly illustrated by their working on their version of clang. While it's true that they're working on Hurd, they're also working on kFreeBSD. So essentially, they'd have 3 platforms for their users, all of which hopefully would support apt packages. In fact, coming to think of it, that's the other advantage of supporting Debian.

AFAIK Debian makes its software available via GPLv3 where possible, and there have a clear policy that everything that is packaged needs to be very clear as to what license that software (or even files within the software or documentation) are under. I see Debian trying to work with the FSF where it can, and they had a FSF speaker at Debconf10 in NYC. The Debian develers are very devoted to the principles of software freedom. I have a lot of respect for RMS and historically he's been proven right time and time again, so regardless of often being looked upon as an extremist, he seems to have good forward-looking vision, and I think the Debian developers likewise take him seriously.

I'll have a look at what's going on with Clang, but in the meantime I shoud point out that packages in Debian usually start out being uploaded by an indiviual (possibly directly if the person is a Debian developer, or via a sponsored upload if the person is not a DD the the Debian Maintainers list). In the case of a sponsored upload, the amount of developer discussion and review may be relatively minimal, so I wouldn't look upon a single package in Debian as something to use to make a generalization about the entire distribution.

what are you talking about? http://localhost:631/ opens the cups page.

I'm pretty sure that Mac users don't have to point a browser to http://localhost:631/ [localhost] to add a printer,

Actually they do. This is the easiest way to configure printers, and the interface is exactly the same as on Linux.

or use the Gnome/KDE GUIs.

OSX printer configuration utility looks like a twin of KDE one.

No, I didn't, but I'm not sure that matters. CUPS is just the underlying printing subsystem. I'm pretty sure that Mac users don't have to point a browser to http://localhost:631/ to add a printer, or use the Gnome/KDE GUIs. That can be the hard part of adding a printer. (They may have different drivers available than linux tends to, but I don't have any data on that.)

Do you like having the ability to print in Linux? Next time you go to print, I highly recommend opening your browser and typing http://localhost:631/

Not even http://localhost:631/ ? It's not that bad, though the system-config-printer that is in YDL is a touch faster.

Magic_Printer_Website

Your Mac uses CUPS. Pop open your Mac and go to http://localhost:631/ and you will see.

Decent printer configuration tool? Why settle for that when you can get the best one available that supports all of CUPS' features? Just browse to http://localhost:631/ and configure all your printers from there!

The problem is entirely in the installer, not the driver.

After I bought an SCX-4100 a couple of years ago, I ran the installer. I saw right away that most of what the installer did was worthless. It installed some GUI that was simply inferior to CUPS+KDE. That made me mad, so I undid the effects of the installer and dissected it until I figured out what actually needed to be installed to just print and scan. The list of files required turns out to be pretty simple, as long as you connect via USB instead of the parallel port:

- /usr/lib/cups/backend/mfp

- /usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosamsung{pcl,spl,splc}

- /usr/lib/libmfp.so*

- /usr/share/ppd/Samsung/scx4100.ppd.gz

- /usr/lib/sane/libsane-smfp.so*

- /etc/sane.d/smfp.conf

You can get all of these files out of the driver package. None of them need to be installed suid root or anything out of the ordinary. All you need is read/write access to /dev/usb/lp0 (provided by the usblp kernel module), which you can usually gain by being a member of group "lp" or whatever your distribution calls it. Also, you need a line in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf that contains "smfp" so that sane will look for libsane-smfp.so .

Use the normal CUPS and SANE configuration steps to set it up. If you're lucky, you can use http://localhost:631/ , unless your distribution has disabled that method of configuration.

I blogged about this two years ago:

    http://hathawaymix.org/Weblog/2005-07-15

Note that many of the details have changed. This post is more correct.

Even though I've avoided the setuid security hole by installing by hand, I'm still very irritated that I have to use proprietary binaries with who knows how many security holes. Next time I'm not going to settle for a proprietary driver. Samsung advertised Linux support and that's half the reason I bought the printer, but I didn't realize the driver was proprietary until I already had the printer.

Samsung, if you read this, listen up: I am happy with the speed and reliability of this printer (I've gone through 5-6 reams of paper and only 1 cartridge), and I am happy that you have added x86_64 support. However, if I had known that I would spend about 40 hours messing with your drivers just to get the printer to work, I would have bought an HP printer instead, even if it cost twice as much. I will not be a repeat customer and I will not recommend any of your printers to anyone else unless you open your drivers.

Browsing to http://localhost:631/ in firefox to configure your printer is one of the totally counter-intuitive things ESR was complaining about. Browsing to some random port on localhost is like having to tweak a registry key in XP, and it should not be necessary or tolerated for anything a 'normal user' is likely to do.

If you want to add a new printer there should be an "add new printer" tool somewhere obvious, like under the System menu. Bonus points if it already detects the attached printer for you, and if the system can be configured to pop up the add-printer dialog any time you plug in a new printer.

Some kind of corner has been turned for the GNU/Linux desktop in 2006. I light off cups (that is, go to http://localhost:631/ in FF), enter th IP address of the printer in the obvious place, and stuff works.

Some kind of corner has been turned for the GNU/Linux desktop in 2006.
I light off cups (that is, go to http://localhost:631/ in FF), enter th IP address of the printer in the obvious place, and stuff works.
It's a cheezy home wireless network; I really want the Dumbest Thing That Works, realizing that if there is a reset, DHCP may re-jigger things.
Trying to figure out how to set a printer by IP in that other OS has baffled me. It's an Easter Egg hunt gone ronngg. The quest for simplicity has been abandoned at a variety of levels.
At least I only have to suffer that OS at work.

You haven't clicked on administer in http://localhost:631/ in OS X? You not only need admin, you need a root password. Sorry to be pedantic.

Eh?

apt-get install cupsys cupsys-driver-gimpprint cupsys-client cupsys-pt

http://localhost:631/

Login as root and setup a printer.

Or is the problem finding the right device to use?

-matthew

Documentation? About all I did was check linuxprinting.org for printers known to work, then went out and found one. All the foomatic, cups, hplip, etc packages were installed, and just went through the default steps for adding a printer through http://localhost:631/ (the default cups admin interface). I've no idea where to put freshly-downloaded PPDs to make them available to CUPS, however. For printers not listed on linuxprinting (I get the impression that it's not as up-to-date as it could be), their forum archives might have additional info...

I have no clue what the "CUPS web admin" is...

assuming cups is running on your comp:
http://localhost:631/

Well I have tried MacOSX Version 10.2. OK, they are not at Version 10.4 so I've heared.
But the things I didn't like at that old version (it was labelled as a production release) which now might have been fixed, and are unfortunately now found in almoust any OS to some extend, are:

1. It's a complete memory hog, my iBook came with 128 megs of RAM and OSX installed, it just was _slow_.

2. It really lags quite a lot. When I had 128 megs of RAM, I could understand that it takes a few seconds between pressing the volume button and the volume actually changing. But with 640 megs it still did the same. Even worse, it did it again when I pressed the button again a few seconds later. Before that iBook I had an old one running MacOS 8.5. The harddisk was actually able to turn itself off while watching movies as I was able to make a ramdisk holding the movie and still make the OS run. And that all on a machine with only 96 megs of RAM.

3. It's not quite there yet. There are many usability problems, for example all programs beeing not compiled with libreadline support. It really sucks, when you have to retype your lines in bc again.

4. Many things are extremely non-obvious. For example, imagining running your computer as a webserver. They could have made a folder named "Webserver content" somewhere or stick with /var/httpd/httpdocs or something. Insteadt they used a directory somewhere hidden under /lib. That's just sick. And when you want to edit the settings of Apache, there's no nice dialog, not even a file in /etc/, you have to find your httpd.conf by yourself. Adding a network printer is done by going to http://localhost:631/ despite of there beeing a printer setup dialog.

MacOSX just became another one of those boring unixoid OSes. And at least that old version was really bad at it. Still, even a good Linux-distribution is not a _lot_ better than this. Some of the points are even solved a lot better by Windows, especially the old versions (Windows 3.11, etc.).

I really wish Apple would have done this: Develop a thin GUI-less unixoid OS and run MacOS in an older version in a virtualized "machine" (it works, MacOnLinux is doing this for years now), and perhaps move the new main GUI to something based on the Newton OS. Then they would stand out of it. They wouldn't be compared to Linux anymore, they would have something special. Something that worked. Something they could even scale down for pocket sized devices. They could build $40 Macs, connecting to the TV or VGA-monitor. They could even have the first "secure" content protection system by running it in a seperate virtual system.

This is not intended to bash MacOSX. It's still probably the best commercial operating system there is. But it still has it's quirks and problems. It could have been done better. Things won't change if we just consider things to be "good enought". That "good enought" philosophy has created such ugly things as C(++) leading to masses of malware and worms. (Buffer overruns and stack overflows are only found in C(++) programms)

FUD alert

How difficult is it really? On my Gentoo system:

emerge cups hpiijs

fire up a web browser and point it to http://localhost:631/

Add new printer, selecting HPIIJS driver.

Have you tried looking in the CUPS config? That appears to be where you set the default paper size for a particular printer, among other things.

The reason some printers work on OS X and not on Linux is because CUPS allows running binary print filters. Remember, CUPS has nothing to do with preparing a data stream for printing. It is merely a queue manager. All it does to prepare a data stream is to hand it off to the filter program.

Many printer manufacturers use Carbon filters for OS X. Game over.

Now about ESR's comments, I never really saw what was so hard about it. Not that I'm claiming to be incredibly smarter than him, but the hardest part of setting up a printer using CUPS under Debian was knowing that I had to point my browser at http://localhost:631/. After that, what's so hard about clicking on Printers, Add Printer, then select the make and model? Seems pretty easy to me.

Maybe ESR wasn't using the CUPS web interface, but instead using some GNOME/KDE front end. Well then that's the problem because GNOME & KDE both suck anyway. For that matter, the OS X GUI front end to CUPS isn't all that great either. Really, the only great thing about CUPS on OS X is that when you plug in your printer, it just works and doesn't need to be configured.

But it's not recommended to do this on all systems in which CUPS is used.

For example, on Fedora Core 3 GNU/Linux when one tries to manage printers by visiting http://localhost:631 with a web browser, one sees "Use system-config-printer to edit this!". For those who don't know, "system-config-printer" is a supplied printer configuration program which is probably most commonly accessed through the main menu (in GNOME, pick Applications->System Settings->Printing).

You are right that all of these things can easily be solved, if you know what to do. This doesn't help the normal user, though. For example, look at the printer configuration in Fedora. Of course you can click on "New printer" and install it, but what if you need to use a custom PPD? Right, you copy the file manually into /etc/cups/ppd. You can also control the printer from the graphical control panel, but what if the printer is out of paper and stops? Right, you have to load http://localhost:631/, then enter your root password, and start the printer again. This isn't a device driver issue or a issue of "Windows doing black magic", it's just software which is only half finished.

Why would you say Slackware isn't really the first choice as a desktop system?

I just ask because, well... you can install KDE, Gnome, OOo... every desktop app I can think of. Once swaret or similar is setup via cron then you don't need to tinker with rpm dependancy hell with GUI upgrade software.

It's not like you've said it's too advanced, which I could understand some linux newbies finding it - you say you install it for backend servers.

What am I missing in some other distro that I don't know about?!

(I'd setup cups via http://localhost:631/ for printing, myself).

Else point your browser to http://localhost:631/admin (normally it's enabled) and use the web panel to configure it.

...where you will promptly find one of the enduring mysteries of CUPS. Which user/pass does it want?

Currently my HP deskjet printer is not working, even though it should be supported by the kernel

I would like to see higher levels and even user space processes dedicated for this kind of hardware. Let the disk IO, memory etc. be left to the kernel

Funnily enough, that's the same for your printer. The printer itself isn't supported by the kernel (only at USB level) - you need your printing daemon (almost certainly CUPS) configured to use your printer. Mandrake, SuSE and probably FC have interfaces to configure CUPS and your printer, or if you're using KDE, it also has a control centre module for it IIRC.

Else point your browser to http://localhost:631/admin (normally it's enabled) and use the web panel to configure it.

These "power users," if they're smart enough to know how to configure CUPS on Linux, are presumably smart enough to figure out how to do the same thing on Mac OS X, right? After all, the CUPS admin panel is sitting right there at http://localhost:631/, just like you'd expect on a Linux or BSD system.

So in this particular instance, at least, your "power users" lose nothing by using a Mac and gain a great GUI. What was your point again?

Finder won't show .hidden files. THIS is UNIX?

You mean just like how in my shell I have to type ls -a instead of ls? If it's hidden, there's a probably a good reason. Remember, most Mac users aren't slashdot geeks yet and they need something that works; if you can't see it or accidentally delete it it's not going to unexpectedly break. Nevermind the problem of all those silly dotfiles in everyone's home directories...

Is it possible to get lpd running...

Hmmm, I'm not sure. Maybe you can mess around with CUPS and see. http://localhost:631. I don't have my iBook with me, but I'm pretty sure that's the management interface's port. I'm sure there must be something in there somewhere, but I never print so good luck.

Like you said, I love it. Jaguar is awesome.

IMHO, setting up a printer is just as easy in Linux as in Windows - if you already have the driver, that is. apt-get install cupsys cubsys-bsd and point your browser at http://localhost:631, then just chose your printer.
If you need to compile Ghostscript with stp-support it gets much harder though. Buying an older printer makes stuff a whole lot easier.