remote printer: use the closed source server side driver

john terragon terragonjohn at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 28 14:52:00 PST 2013


Hi.

I have a brother inkjet printer that has one of those cupswrapper drivers
(that, correct me if I'm wrong, use some closed source binary exe as a cups filter). I want to use this printer with its closed source driver inside a vm linux printer server that runs as a guest on my "actual" linux installation.
Clearly, I would like to use the printer from the host machine as a remote printer installed on the vm guest/print server (with the close source driver installed only on the vm guest). One way to do it is to add the printer on the server (with the closed source driver) and then add to the /etc/cups/client.conf on the client the server ip. But what if I wanted to add the printer as a, say, ipp remote printer on the client. In that case, after I give the URI for the printer I have to choose I driver, a client-side one I think, thus defeating the purpose of the whole thing. Is there a way of adding a remote printer on the client so that it uses the server-side driver?
I tried the raw driver and it seemed to work but I'm not sure why since I thought that the raw driver was to be used in the opposite case (i.e. on the server so that the client side driver could be used).
Any ideas/explanations?
Thanks
john





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