I’ve just set up my new server, and I want it to act as a print server. I want it to accept jobs from both the cloud and from my other Linux machines in my house. Here’s what I did.
Cups Installation
First, I had to install cups and get my printer working. Here’s how I installed cups:
sudo apt-get install cups
Before editing the configuration file, I backed it up as recommended:
sudo cp /etc/cups/cupsd.conf /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.original sudo chmod a-w /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.original sudo vi /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
I added this line after the two Listen lines:
Port 631
I also added the “ServerAdmin” line to add my email address. Finally, I restarted the service to make the changes take affect:
sudo service cups restart
For security, I added my regular user to the lpadmin group:
sudo usermod -aG lpadmin <regular username>
After that, I kept getting “Forbidden” on the web page. So, I found this command:
sudo cupsctl --remote-admin sudo service cups restart
Configuring the Printer
First on the server, I had to install the hplip package:
sudo apt-get install hplip
From the admin web interface (https://server-ip:631/admin/), I clicked the “Add Printer” button. It asked for my username and password. I entered the same one that I used to log into the machine.
My printer (HP PSC) was under the local section. I picked it off the list. Next, I just had to give it a name and choose to share it. Next, I picked the printer model (hplip had to be installed).
Google Cloud Print
First, I had to install a few prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install git-core python python-cups
To make the pip install command work, I had to install this package:
sudo apt-get install python-pip
Then, I ran the install command:
sudo pip install cloudprint
Then, I just ran:
cloudprint
On the first run, it prompted me for my Google account username/email address and my password. After that, it added my PSC printer to my “devices” list on my Google account.
Installing as a Service
I installed the python daemon package:
sudo apt-get install python-daemon
Then, I swiped junkyhlm’s service script. I opened up a new script:
sudo vi /etc/init.d/cloudprint
#!/bin/bash
# /etc/rc.d/cloudprint
# Description: Starts the Google Cloud Print script on startup
# ----------------
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: Cloud-Print
# Required-Start: $cups $network $local_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Description: Start Google Cloud Print
### END INIT INFO
PIDFILE="/var/run/cloudprint/pid"
case $1 in
start)
echo -n "Starting Google Cloud Print: "
cloudprint -d -p $PIDFILE
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping Google Cloud Print: "
killall -9 cloudprint
;;
restart)
echo -n "Restarting Google Cloud Print: "
killall -9 cloudprint
cloudprint -d -p $PIDFILE
;;
*)
echo "Usage: cloudprint {start|stop|restart}"
;;
esac
Make sure to change the username if you use this.
I made sure the script was executable and make sure the var, run directory exists:
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/cloudprint sudo mkdir /var/run/cloudprint
Finally, I could start the service:
sudo service cloudprint start
To make the service autostart upon boot, I ran the following command:
sudo update-rc.d cloudprint defaults
Cloud Print — Failed Method
Now, that all worked fine for me. I did try to install Cloudprint a different way initially, and that wouldn’t work. I am including it for reference in case anyone runs into the same error or if someone wants to point out what I did wrong. The “pip” installer worked better than trying to install from the GitHub repository.
So, first I downloaded the source with git:
cd ~ git clone git://github.com/armooo/cloudprint.git
That created a “cloudprint” folder. Then, I built it with this:
cd cloudprint python setup.py build
Next, I installed it with this command:
sudo python setup.py install
The third line from the bottom of the output tells me that it installed the program in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/cloudprint-0.11-py2.7.egg
When I tried to run it, I got this message:
$ python /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/cloudprint-0.11-py2.7.egg /usr/bin/python: can't find '__main__' module in '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/cloudprint-0.11-py2.7.egg'