Linux Printserver With HP C3180
January 12, 2008

I fumbled through a good bit of this and would rather have found a simple how-to on getting this setup. Alas, one was not readily accessible and I hope to remedy this! Please note, this is a print server not necessarily a Samba file server so I will only highlight the portions relevant to printing.

First, you must install cupsys using "aptitude install cupsys" and the HP drivers by "aptitude install hpijs. This will get all the software installed that you need to get going. If you're doing this from scratch, you'll also want to install Samba at this point.

Now that you've got cups installed, you'll need to configure it by editing "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf". In here you'll be needing to change the "Listen" option to listen on your local ethernet interface and enabling /admin and /admin/conf access to all by doing the following:

<Location /admin/conf>
  AuthType Default
  Require user @SYSTEM
  Order allow,deny
  #Allow localhost
  Allow all
</Location>

for both "/admin/conf" and "/admin". This will allow you to connect to the admin panel from any machine on your network. You'll need to go in to the web site through the interface specified earlier and select "Add Printer" . I found that the "HP PhotoSmart P100 Foomatic/cdj1600" driver works quite well for the HP C3180 that I have.

Once you've gotten the printer added into cups, go ahead and print a test page through the web interface. Did that work? Good. You're almost there!

Now the Samba configuration is pretty simple. Just add printing = cups to the top of you /etc/samba/smb.conf and the following to the bottom:

[printers]
  comment = SMB Print Spool
  path = /var/spool/samba
  guest ok = Yes
  printable = Yes
  #use client driver = Yes
  default devmode = Yes
  browseable = Yes

This is from the Secure Office Networking guide from the Samba site. You'll notice that I commented out "use client driver", however. I did this so that I could use the printer as a delicious raw Postscript printer and not have to both with much clientside configuration.

That's it. Now you've got (or at least I've got) a shiny new print server. You should probably restrict your admin rights by re-editing "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf" and then you're golden. If you've got any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I'll try to lend a hand. Good luck!