I'm trying to install a network printer to my Gentoo workstation, but have never used printing in Linux before and am unsure of how to proceed. I'm stuck in the CUPS web interface based printer adding process, at what device and device URI to set. I have looked through the properties and settings of the printer on the server machine, but couldn't find anything relevant.

The printer model is Brother HL-1430, and it's attached with USB to the Windows XP powered printer server and shared to the network. Other (Windows) machines in the network can successfully reach the printer.

How can I find out what Device and Device URI I should specify?

Try selecting "Windows Printer via Samba" and try one of the suggested URL forms. Try using IPP first. Then continue to select your particular printer. There are two drivers listed for Brother HL-1430.

1 members found this post helpful.

I selected SAMBA and then ipp://.../ipp as URI. Now the printer page says "Connecting to 192.168.1.105 on port 631..." beside the printer name title. When trying to print a test page, the status of the new job is "processing". No sign of contact with the printer, though.

Edit: The printer status text is then changed to "recoverable: Unable to connect to printer; will retry in 30 seconds...". This goes also for URIs of the formats ipp://.../ipp/port1 and http://...:631/ipp. Will try other drivers.

wouldn't it be smb: instead of ipp? something like smb://wuser:wpassword@WGROUP/wserver/wprinter ?

1 members found this post helpful.

That makes sense. Wait... Yay, it works!

For the record, I used the form "smb://wgroup/server/printer", plus the printer name had a space in it, but substituting it with "%20" went fine.

Edit: And also for the record, I used the "Brother HL-1430 Foomatic/hl1250" driver.

Thanks MrChilly0. I thought IPP would be a starting point because the port would be open, and it is supposed to be a standard. Thanks for the feedback Arla. Now we all learned something.