On 21/05/13 17:13, Chris Walker wrote:
I'm having another try at making network printing work.
I bought a Buffalo ADSL router recently with the facility to print using the inbuilt USB port. I connected up the printer and tried to make my system see the it. But it never does. If I set the host address as 192.168.1.1, the system picks the port number as 9100. I've looked on the router and all I can see is a WebAccess External Port set to 9000 so I'm guessing that 9100 isn't likely to be about right.
The router can also be used as a media server with a USB disc plugged in instead of the printer. If I do that, the disc is seen as smb://ap0024a5bdb4dc/disk1_pt1/ and I can see and read the files (the buffalo is seen on a wifi network as Buffalo-BDB4DC so that ties in too).
But I'm still stuck as to why I can't print.
Can anybody suggest a way forward please?
Wild stabbing in the dark here:
I'm guessing if the external drive shows up as smb:/ then any attached printer would show up as a smb (samba) printer share. Try something that will browse samba shares (e.g. a Windows machine(!), or something like smbtree) and see if it shows up. If it does, it should be reasonably straight froward. If you use the printer config dialog box and point it at the right share, you should be then able to install any drivers, or configure the printer as required.
If it's not a samba share, then it'll be more complicated. I'd think the first thing you'd have to do is check the port number and IP address are right. Try something to do a port scan (nc, nmap?). Once you're sure of the IP address, perhaps try using telnet to see if you can talk to the port. Try sending it some text and a ctrl+L which should hopefully cause a page feed. That'll only work though if the router is presenting the port as if it was a local usb/printer port. If it's working as a print server running a print queue, it'll be more complicated.
On my copy of Lubuntu, the ways a network printer can be connected to include: via ip address, or via dnssd, or Internet Printing Protocol (ipp, ipps, http or ipp14), LPD/LPR or Windows print share via Samba.
Hope that helps in some way.
Steve