Hack #25. Configure Linux Connections to Remote CUPS Printers
Quickly set up connections to remote printers using the CUPS web-based interface.
It would be nice if each user had her own printer, so we could all avoid the inherent bottlenecks caused when some thoughtless user prints a 100-page manual or a bunch of high-resolution vacation photos to one of your school's or company's central printers. Unfortunately, the purchase and maintenance costs of high-volume printers can be quite high, so most schools and businesses concentrate resources on one or two good ones and configure all their desktop systems to send print jobs to those printers. Luckily, the web-based administrative interface provided by CUPS makes it quite simple to configure and test connections to remote CUPS printers on Linux systems. Here's how.
Defining a Remote Printer in CUPS
The basic procedure for defining the remote printer is almost identical to that for creating the CUPS print server [Hack #24] , so I won't insult your intelligence by duplicating screenshots and instructions here. Instead, I'll just focus on the two screens that are different and that really matter: the Device screen, where you specify how to connect to the printer; and a new Device URL screen, where you specify the Universal Resource Locator (URL) that uniquely identifies the remote printer.
After authenticating and beginning the process of adding a printer, you'll need to specify the protocol with which your client system will communicate ...