USB printer

[vkashesh]

When I plug a USB printer, I see that it can be found at /dev/usb/lp0

I was wondering if anyone can advice on how to print to it?  I tried cat myfile.txt >/dev/usb/lp0 but the text came out unorganized - did not match the original file format!

I also want to be able to print some bmp, jpeg and other formats without having any side effects.

thanks in advance

[adapted.cat]

Try installing cups. Change the settings to allow management connections from your regular machine, in addition to localhost. Then you can browse to the management port (http://plug:8000) and tell it to detect and add the printer hooked up to the USB.

That's a fairly heavyweight solution, but configuration is easy and it'll allow you to quickly share and manage the printer over the network, with a web front-end. If you want a more traditional UNIX print spool, install lpr or lprng. Configuration of those is a little more fiddly however.

[Reedy]

Cups is 631

[vkashesh]

Try installing cups. Change the settings to allow management connections from your regular machine, in addition to localhost. Then you can browse to the management port (http://plug:8000) and tell it to detect and add the printer hooked up to the USB.

That's a fairly heavyweight solution, but configuration is easy and it'll allow you to quickly share and manage the printer over the network, with a web front-end. If you want a more traditional UNIX print spool, install lpr or lprng. Configuration of those is a little more fiddly however.

So can I access the CUPS management web from a different machine? So I type from my PC in my web browser for example (http://192.168.1.17:631)?

[MattB]

So can I access the CUPS management web from a different machine? So I type from my PC in my web browser for example (http://192.168.1.17:631)?

A very late reply, but just in case you were still wondering, yes, this is correct.

You will need to make sure that you are allowing connections from wherever you are, by checking in cupsd.conf.