Printing from Ubuntu to a Brother HL-2040 connected to an Airport Extreme

So I needed to print to a Brother HL-2040 laser printer that was connected to an Apple Airport Extreme from a Linux box (Ubuntu Dapper).

There are several ways of doing this - the get it working way and the funky way.

First up, you need to get a CUPS driver installed on Dapper for the printer. This is well documented here. For future-proofing these details are:

• Download the Debian HL-2040 LPR driver from http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/lpr_drivers.html#de
• sudo dpkg -i brhl2040lpr_2.0.1-1_i386.deb
• Download the Debian HL-2040 CUPS Wrapper from http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html#de
• ln -s /etc/init.d/cupsys /etc/init.d/cups for debian vs ubuntu differences
• sudo dpkg -i cupswrapperHL2040-2.0.1-2_i386.deb

That gets us drivers, but how to I see this USB-connected-to-an-airport printer over the network?

The get it working way consists of using gnome-printer-view (Clickety click: MenuBar|System|Administration|Printing) select Add New Printer, then select Network Printer, choose HP JetDirect, then Host: the Airport Extreme's IP Address, and leave the Port as 9100. Voila, it all just works - amazing.

The funky way would have been to utilise Rendezvous^WBonjour^WZeroconf to automagically discover and connect the printer. Using ahavi-discover the printer is definitely out there and visible (under _riousbprint._tcp) but it appears that CUPS doesn't want to recognise the advertised URI of mdns://PrinterName._riousbprint._tcp.local. Close, but no banana. Some glue is still missing for this to work - a real shame.

If anyone has ideas on getting CUPS to accept the mdns URI, please let me know. I like to do the funky thing wherever possible :-)

/tech/gadgets | 27 Aug 2007 | #