Quick Start Guide

5
Regarding CUPS and rewall settings, see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS
_and_SANE_Firewall_settings.
14.5 Network Printers
A network printer can support various protocols, some of them even concurrently.
Although most of the supported protocols are standardized, some manufacturers
modify the standard. Manufacturers then provide drivers for only a few operating
systems. Unfortunately, Linux drivers are rarely provided. The current situation is
such that you cannot act on the assumption that every protocol works smoothly in
Linux. Therefore, you may have to experiment with various options to achieve a
functional conguration.
CUPS supports the socket, LPD, IPP and smb protocols.
socket
Socket refers to a connection in which the plain print data is sent directly to a
TCP socket. Some of the socket port numbers that are commonly used are 9100
or 35. The device URI (uniform resource identier) syntax is: sock-
et:// IP.of.the.printer : port , for example: socket://192.168.2.202:9100/.
LPD (Line Printer Daemon)
The LPD protocol is described in RFC 1179. Under this protocol, some job-related
data, such as the ID of the printer queue, is sent before the actual print data is
sent. Therefore, a printer queue must be specied when conguring the LPD
protocol. The implementations of diverse printer manufacturers are exible enough
to accept any name as the printer queue. If necessary, the printer manual should
indicate what name to use. LPT, LPT1, LP1 or similar names are often used. The
port number for an LPD service is 515. An example device URI is
lpd://192.168.2.202/LPT1.
IPP (Internet Printing Protocol)
IPP is a relatively new protocol (1999) based on the HTTP protocol. With IPP, more
job-related data is transmitted than with the other protocols. CUPS uses IPP for
internal data transmission. The name of the print queue is necessary to congure
IPP correctly. The port number for IPP is 631. Example device URIs are
ipp://192.168.2.202/ps and ipp://192.168.2.202/printers/ps.
SMB (Windows Share)
CUPS also supports printing on printers connected to Windows shares. The protocol
used for this purpose is SMB. SMB uses the port numbers 137, 138 and 139. Exam-
ple device URIs are smb://user:password@workgroup/smb.example.com/printer,
smb://user:[e-mail]/printer, and
smb://smb.example.com/printer.
The protocol supported by the printer must be determined before conguration. If
the manufacturer does not provide the needed information, the command nmap (which
170 Start-Up