Hi all,

I run a small network of 20 or so workstations and a server. The server has an Epson C900 printer set-up via USB and works fine. It has the printer exported "browsable" through cups config.

The workstations used to find this printer via kprinter (kde). I could never get lpr-cups or lp-cups to find it properly so I simply symlinked kprinter on these workstations to lp and lpr.

Recently the workstations have been upgraded to KDE4 which doesn't come with kprinter and thus my cheap hack no longer works.

I've re-enabled CUPS on all the workstations. I set it to access the server printer over IPP. At first I ran into lots of issues because I didn't have the ALC-900 backend (basically, fooscript stuff) installed. Now when I try to print a test page from CUPS on the workstation to CUPS server printer I get "octal-stream" not recognised.

Have I got the right idea here?

Or should I buy a network card for the printer and do without the print server entirely?

When you set up CUPS on the workstations you need to go to Add Printer .... Remote CUPS server (IPP/HTTP) .. Give the hostname of your server and the port CUPS is on (631 usually). Then choose your printer.
When you are asked for the "Driver", you must click "Raw Printer (no driver needed)", because the workstations do not need a driver, the server handles all that.
Then it should work.