7 thoughts on - Printing On C8S

• Hi Fred, can you share a little bit more information? For example, are you using the default Gnome desktop environment? What kind of printer do you have? How is it connected to C8S (USB, Wi-Fi, Ethernet…?)

  I use Gnome, and it’s been a long time since I had to poke around with CUPS. My Brother printer (MFC-9340CDW) is pretty old these days, but still works after I download and install the “Driver Install Tool” RPM from the brother.com website…

• According to <https://www.cups.org/doc/admin.html>

  The everywhere driver is used for nearly all modern networks printers sold since about 2009. For example, the following command creates a destination for a printer at IP address 11.22.33.44:

  lpadmin -p printername -E -v ipp://11.22.33.44/ipp/print -m everywhere

  On a Fedora 35 machine, which should probably be pretty close to C8S, the lpadmin executable is provided by the standard cups rpm

  $ rpm -qf $(which lpadmin)
  cups-2.3.3op2-11.fc35.x86_64

  Hope this helps, Barry

• John, it is a Brother DCP7065DN, on the hardwired network and visible to all the computers here.

  Actually, I just installed Mate (can’t stand that Gnome-thing) but neither it nor Gnome shows any printer config utilities.

  Barry, I’ll check into lpadmin. Still, I’d think there would be something actually visible in one of the menus, and as far as I can see there isn’t.

  Fred

• In Gnome it’s in Settings – i.e. top bar, right menu -> settings. It changes position sometimes it might be at the top level of settings or under devices.

  The “official” way of dealing with CUPS printers is to use the web interface – i.e. http://localhost:631 – that should work on all systems and all environments so long as you have cuspd running.

  P.

• You can download the linux drivers from the Brother web site, I had to do the same for my printer.

  —–Original Message—

• On Fedora Mate, printer settings are in: System > Control Center >
  Administration, Print Settings.

  Fred, too.

• OK, I’ve done those commands, and the system thinks it has a printer configured. I had assumed that the everywhere driver meant we’d be using
  “ipp everywhere”, which I had assumed meant I would NOT need to install Brother drivers. but send a print job causes no paper to come out of the printer, and I see this in lpstat -t output:

  $ lpstat -t scheduler is running no system default destination device for DCP7065DN: ///dev/null DCP7065DN accepting requests since Fri 07 Jan 2022 10:46:21 AM EST
  printer DCP7065DN is idle. enabled since Fri 07 Jan 2022 10:46:21 AM EST
  File “/usr/lib/cups/filter/brlpdwrapperDCP7065DN” not available: No such file or directory DCP7065DN-6 fredex 867328 Fri 07 Jan 2022 10:46:21
  AM EST

  which makes me guess I still need the Brother drivers. I can certainly go get them and install them (not as if I hadn’t done it before on multiple systems), but I was hoping that “ipp everywhere” would work.

  [later] I managed to get a working printer by using the Gnome printer configuration tool. but it wasn’t fun. I had to install the Brother drivers because ‘everywhere’ doesn’t seem to work with my Brother printer (possibly Brother’s fault, I dunno). the gnome printer setup tool is anything but intuitive–despite what the help system says I can’t find any way to define the default printer, there’s just no option there where help says it should be. when I enter the URI of the printer (ipp://192.168.2.97/ipp) it lists three choices of printers, as far as I can tell, only one of them actually prints anything. but then I shouldn’t be surprised at the ugly tool, it fits right in with the rest of the Gnome desktop.

  Unfortunately, the MATE for CentOS-8 seems to be a one-off by a 3rd party, so I can’t complain to the Mate community about its lack of a printer config tool (or other tools that don’t work).

  In fact, system-config-printer does seem to exist, but (1) it isn’t found in any menu I can find, anywhere, but on disk, if one searches with some diligence, and (2) when I attempt to invoke it “python36 gui.py” it just errors out on me. since I don’t know any more about python than it takes to type that command, I don’t know how to fix it. I’m guessing it has never been ported to Python 3.x.

  I’d like to stay with CentOS or other RH-derived distro, but not if I’m forced to use Gnome desktop.

  Thanks for all the various replies you all sent me!

  Fred