what's the proper naming convention for usb ports? i know that the first LPT printer port is referred to as /dev/lp0 and the first serial port is referred to as /dev/ttyS0 but what about usb ports?

i have a usb printer that will not spooling correctly and i think it is simply because my CUPS configuration file is referring to the wrong device.

i can see print jobs accumulating in the print queue, but they are never relayed to the printer. again, i think i need to edit the print configuration file to direct output of the print jobs to the correct usb port.

thanks in advance for tha assistance.

You haven't said what distro you use, so yours may vary

I use Turboprint and CUPS to set up my printer. When I point my web browser to 127.0.0.1:631 for the CUPS setup program, I get the device uri as usb://canon/ip3000.

It should only be necessary to go into your printer setup program and select usb printer when given the choice.

If you have SuSe, it's easy using YasT, but if you print using CUPS (and if you don't, in my opinion you should, but that's just my opinion) you can access your printer setup via http://127.0.0.1:631 from your web browser. If your printer is on a different server, just substitute the IP address of that server for the localhost one.

suse linux pro 9.2 is the distro. using yast i can setup printing from the local host. what i'm trying to do now is share the printer with windows clients through cups/samba.

when i look at the cups web setup (http://localhost:631) my device uri is listed as mfp:/dev/mfp4

i don't think this is proper naming convention. i think samsung's printer/scanner setup script created this.

if i understand samba/cups correctly, you are supposed to setup a raw print queue in cups. the windows clients prepare the data using their own print driver. the raw cups queue simply spools the data to the printer. in order to do this, cups needs to know where to send the output. in the case of a parallel printer this would normally be /dev/lp0

for usb printing i don't know where to direct the output.

after reading some other posts i saw a tip on running "lsusb" command. here is the output from lsusb

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04a9:220d Canon, Inc. CanoScan N670U/N676U/LiDE 20
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04e8:3409 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I have a Canon scanner (Bus 002 Device 003) and a Samsusung printer (Bus 002 Device 002).

now . . . i want to edit the cups configuration file to route output from my raw print queue to the samsung printer. should that be /dev/usb/002 or something similar?

OK, what you have is not a USB issue, because usb devices are detected and the queue is more or less automagic, as evidenced by the fact that you can print locally (is that true?)

To have your printer visible to a Windows client, you need to use Samba.

I'm going t give you a blow by blow description of how to set the printer up in this so if I mention something obvious, remember other people are reading this also.

Open the Network Services section in YaST and look for the Samba server module. If it's not there you will need to install the yast2-samba-server rpm, just search on samba in the install software module and make sure that samba itself and all the yast ones are ticked.

Then when you have the samba server module in yast, open it.

In the Start-up tab, select "During Boot" to make sure it's always available. You need to open th port in your firewall if you have the firewall enabled. I rely on the firewall in my ADSL router, so I'm not familiar with that bit.

Under the shares tab, you hopefully will find a list of things that are being shared.

If there is one labelled "print$", make sure it is enabled. If not, click on the "add" button and fill in the form. Select "printer" for the type and give it the name print$, to share all the CUPS printers then click "OK".

Now go to the "identity" tab and make sure that the Workgroup name matches the workgroup name on your Windows box.

Go into advanced settings and set your smbpasswd file to "etc/samba/smbpasswd"

from an xterm, you need to make sure you have created samba users that match your regular users. If you use ldap or some other authentication, the rules are different, otherwise, as root:

#smbadd -a USERNAME

then add the password you want to use. Use the same password you use for unix login to save grief.

Leave the other settings at the default unless you know your way around Windows networking (I don't).


The following is for Windows 2000, because that's what I have. XP is probably similar.

Ensure that you have installed the drivers for the printer on your Windows box.

Now go to your windows box and go START menu -> settings -> printers -> add printer -> next.

Select Network printer and click "Next" then "next" again to browse for a printer.

If your Samba server is working properly and talking to your Windows box, you should see a tree with your cvhosen workgroup name at the top \, followed by the name of your server and then a list of the printer queues you have configured with YaST. (You can have multiple queues on the same printer with different settings)

Select one of these ( it doesn't matter which one) and you will get a box saying that the server has no driver for your printer and asking if you want to use a local driver. Answer "OK" and choose the printer driver for your printer from the menu (or "have disk" if you haven't installed the driver yet).

Select it as your default printer if you want and print a test page to verify.

Have a beer to celebrate your success (optional)

for troubleshooting there is lots of documentation out there regarding Samba. I dont fully understand it all, but the above is how I did it.

Let me know if this was of any use to you.

i have the samba server functioning fine for file sharing. printing is the only thing i'm lacking.

i have a raw print queue created as per samba documentation. i'm even to the point where the windows clients will spool print jobs to the linux box under the /var/spool/samba path that i've defined in [printers] section of smb.conf

but then the jobs just sit in queue. they are never relayed to the printer.

i believe i had this problem once before with a traditional lpt parallel printer. for some reason cups setup the uri as /dev/canon

i had to change /etc/cups/printers.conf from /dev/canon to dev/lp0 and things began to print.

i've only done this one other time so i'm no expert, but i think this is a cups problem - not samba. the samba portion works in that windows boxes prepare print jobs using their own print driver then spool the data to the linux box. in that sense, the windows clients are using the shared resource.

it's after the print jobs arrive on the linux box that the break down ocurrs. i don't think cups can relay the data because it cannot determine the proper port location (such as when i had to change /dev/canon to /dev/lp0).

i think i'm close. i just need to know what to name the usb port as a uri location.

okay. for you folks who are interested in the answer . . .

/dev/usb/lp0 seems to work properly.

i found the answer in another forum - a debian forum, but it seems to work on my suse/cups/samba system as well.