Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Printer Sharing

You can configure your Mac’s CUPS print server to listen for incoming print jobs over the network. This lets other computers use your machine as their print server, printing out documents on the printers connected to it. These client machines can run any OS that can speak the CUPS, LP, or LPR protocols—e.g., Windows, Unix, or other Mac OS X machines (the latter of which would access your printers by adding an IP Printing printer entry into their own printer lists, as described earlier in Section 8.3.1.1, pointing it at your computer’s IP address).

Printer Sharing Through the Sharing Pane

The easiest way to activate this feature involves bringing up the Sharing preferences pane’s Services tab (Figure 8-1) and activating the USB Printer Sharing checkbox. This automatically modifies the relevant part of the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file and then restarts the print server for you.

If the Sharing pane finds /etc/cups/cupsd.conf in an unexpected state (such as the result of your performing manual edits on it), then the Sharing pane will refuse to modify the file further; the Printer Sharing checkbox will lock into a checked state, even if you try unchecking it.

Should you find yourself in this situation and wish to make this simple interface available again, remove the existing /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file (backing it up somewhere first, if you wish), and then copy /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.old in its place. If both files get corrupted somehow, you’ll have to fall back to your OS ...