I was recently faced with the problem of adding a printer to a remote host or desktop. I was able to gain access to the desktop through “ssh” and did not have VNC installed. I also was not able to travel to the location to add the printer and other users in the area already had the printer configured on their desktop.

I found that adding a printer manually to cups in Linux is not difficult. The procedure is as follows:

• cd /etc/cups
• vi /etc/cups/printers.conf
• after the section add the printer information.
• printername
  Info Created by OS information
  DeviceURI socket://printername.domain name:9100
  Location
  State Idle
  Accepting Yes
  JobSheets none none
  QuotaPeriod 0
  PageLimit 0
  KLimit 0
• Exit out of the printers.conf file
• cd ppd
• Copy the PPD file for the printer into this directory.
• Restart cups.
• The user should see the printer in his or her local printcap.

I hope this helps someone out when they do not have access to the localhost to use the web browser interface for cups.

Mike Kniaziewicz, MIS