[cups] Windows printing from CUPS on Mac

Michael Sweet msweet at apple.com
Mon Oct 26 10:35:32 PDT 2015


Brian,

Driver sharing can only be done via Samba...


> On Oct 26, 2015, at 1:02 PM, Brian Corbin <brian.corbin at ibethel.org> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Michael.
> 
> I appreciate your answers. That helps me.  I was doing some research online and I see multiple people sharing how they have cups serving out windows drivers to windows clients just like a windows print server would.  They show how you can just copy the drivers from the windows machine that has them installed already and put them in the /usr/share/cups/drivers folder on the cups server.  The only thing is when I go to that directory, I don’t see a drivers folder. I only see other folders and a drv folder.  Should they go in the drv folder?
> 
> They also said to download the cups windows drivers from the CUPS website, version 6.0 or something like that, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere on the CUPS website.  I know you said this is an undocumented feature, but if other people online saying they have it working, is there anything you can share with me to help make this work? This would make life so much easier on our network to have one print server taking care of all our Mac’s and Windows clients for printing and driver delivery as well. We really don’t wan’t to use Windows for print server stuff or any server stuff for that matter.
> 
> Any information you can provide would be great!  Thanks so much for all your help!
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
>> On Oct 22, 2015, at 12:18 PM, Michael Sweet <msweet at apple.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Brian,
>> 
>>> On Oct 22, 2015, at 3:02 PM, Brian Corbin <brian.corbin at ibethel.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> We are trying to use our Mac Server running CUPS to not only serve our Mac’s but also our Windows clients for printing.  It would just make things so much easier for us not having to have two print servers if we don’t need to.
>>> 
>>> So my questions are:
>>> 
>>> 1.  Can windows clients print to CUPS on a Mac?
>> 
>> Yes, with some caveats about drivers and Windows' complete lack of support for authenticated IPP queues.
>> 
>>> 2.  Can Windows clients just see the printer automatically in their Windows Print Browser, or do they need to know a path to the server to be seen?
>> 
>> They need to know the path.
>> 
>>> 3.  Can CUPS deliver Windows Printer Drivers if the client computer doesn’t have the driver?  (Just like Windows server does this basically to windows clients)
>> 
>> No, that operation is a) undocumented and b) requires a separate spoolss RPC connection.
>> 
>>> 4.  If any of this is possible, are there any instructions on how to do any of this or set this up?
>> 
>> Windows supports IPP/1.0, which means using http://servername/printers/queuename for the URL.  Beyond that you'll need local drivers and make sure that the CUPS server recognizes the drivers' file formats as application/vnd.cups-raw.
>> 
>> _________________________________________________________
>> Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> cups mailing list
>> cups at cups.org
>> https://www.cups.org/mailman/listinfo/cups
> 
> _______________________________________________
> cups mailing list
> cups at cups.org
> https://www.cups.org/mailman/listinfo/cups

_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair




More information about the cups mailing list