Sharing my CUPS printer

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Valinote · #1 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 01 Jun 2011, 19:13

Hi guys,

I have an hp photosmart c3100 printer connected via usb to my upstairs pc with Puppy Linux 2.42 and CUPS 1.4.3. The printer shows up in CUPS as HP_Photosmart_C3100_series (Idle, accepting jobs, Shared). I can see and print to it just fine from that pc.

Downstairs I have a compaq laptop with Puppy 2.6.33.2 (5.2.0 Lucid) which also has CUPS 1.4.3. I can see the upstairs printer if I click on the "Manage Printers" tab from the Administration tab. But if I try to get further info by clicking on the printer itself, I get the following error:

"Error - http://192.168.1.103:631/printers/HP_Ph ... 100_series

The page 'http://192.168.1.103:631/printers/HP_Ph ... 100_series' couldn't be loaded.

Cannot connect to destination"

Also on the Printers tab in CUPS the printer is listed as "Location Unknown" (on the pc upstairs that field is blank). If I try to print from an app like PDF Viewer, the printer is listed, and I get no error message if I hit print. But when I check the Jobs tab in CUPS it shows that job as "processing since..." and never completes. If I check the Jobs queue on the upstairs pc, that job doesn't show up at all.

Any advice you can provide to help me with this issue would be kindly appreciated, as my quads are getting overdeveloped from running up and down the stairs!

-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #2 Post by **rcrsn51** » Wed 01 Jun 2011, 20:26

Are you running the Puppy firewall on either machine?

Puppy Linux 2.42 and CUPS 1.4.3.

??? Please explain where you got this combination.

Valinote · #3 Post by **Valinote** » Thu 02 Jun 2011, 14:35

I never configured the firewall on the upstairs pc, and I have it set up but turned off on the laptop.

If I click on the Help icon on the pc it shows me "Welcome to Lucid Puppy version 2.4.2, released Dec 2010". If I bring up the CUPS Printer Wizard in Midori it lists "CUPS 1.4.3" on the Home tab.

-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #4 Post by **rcrsn51** » Thu 02 Jun 2011, 14:52

Welcome to Lucid Puppy version 2.4.2, released Dec 2010

This must have been one of the beta versions.

It sounds like you have the upstairs printer properly configured to be sharable. Just to check, run CUPS and open the Administration tab. Look in the Server section for "Share printers connected to the system".

Like I said, this sounds a lot like a firewall issue. I would boot both machines off the Lupu 520 Live CD using "puppy pfix=ram", set up the printers and run a test.

Is your router performing any firewall functions that might be affecting this?

Valinote · #5 Post by **Valinote** » Tue 07 Jun 2011, 15:37

Finally got some time again to work on this problem...

Just to check, run CUPS and open the Administration tab. Look in the Server section for "Share printers connected to the system".

That box is checked, along with "Allow printing from the internet". I wasn't sure if I needed that one too, but either way it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I would boot both machines off the Lupu 520 Live CD using "puppy pfix=ram", set up the printers and run a test.

I did this and received the same "Cannot connect to destination". I also tried to print via CUPS from another downstairs pc with Lubuntu 10.04 and got the same error.

Like I said, this sounds a lot like a firewall issue. Is your router performing any firewall functions that might be affecting this?

I'm beginning to think you are correct that this problem might be related to my Linksys WRT54GS router. Is there any specific function is should be looking for to turn off?

Is there a way to test my access to the IP address and port in question "192.168.1.103:631". I can ping sucessfully to 192.168.1.103 but I wasn't sure how to check if the 631 port is open or not?

-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #6 Post by **rcrsn51** » Tue 07 Jun 2011, 17:52

Is there a way to test my access to the IP address and port in question "192.168.1.103:631". I can ping sucessfully to 192.168.1.103 but I wasn't sure how to check if the 631 port is open or not?

Look in the Network menu for the Superscan Network Scanner.

Maybe this article will help.

Valinote · #7 Post by **Valinote** » Tue 07 Jun 2011, 19:52

Superscan seems to crash either puppy system after attempting any type of scan. Not sure what's going on there.

I found the "netstat" command and ran that in a terminal on both systems yielding the following results (sorry about the unruly formatting):

# netstat -lp
Active Internet connections (only servers)
ProtoRecv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:631 *:* LISTEN 5571/cupsd
udp 0 0 *:631 *:* 5571/cupsd

The firewall commands for the linksys router all seem to refer to WAN settings, but I disabled them anyway. However my problem still persists.

-Steve D[/img]

rcrsn51 · #8 Post by **rcrsn51** » Tue 07 Jun 2011, 20:22

Valinote wrote:# netstat -lp
Active Internet connections (only servers)
ProtoRecv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:631 *:* LISTEN 5571/cupsd
udp 0 0 *:631 *:* 5571/cupsd

If you run the "ps" command, I believe you will find that PID 5571 refers to the cupsd daemon running on the LOCAL machine, not the remote SERVER.

As another test, you could connect the printer to the Lubuntu machine and make it the server.

Superscan seems to crash either puppy system after attempting any type of scan. Not sure what's going on there.

??? I just tested it in Lupu525 and it worked fine.

rcrsn51 · #9 Post by **rcrsn51** » Tue 07 Jun 2011, 21:28

Here is a copy of nmap for Lupu. Run it from the command line of the CLIENT machine and use the IP address of the SERVER.

Code: Select all

nmap aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd

It should show whether or not Port 631 is open on the server.

Valinote · #10 Post by **Valinote** » Thu 09 Jun 2011, 20:14

Thank you kindly for the utility...

Running nmap on client system (downstairs laptop) and targeting the server (upstairs pc) yields:

# nmap 192.168.1.103

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2011-06-09 15:27 EDT
Unable to find nmap-services! Resorting to /etc/services
Cannot find nmap-payloads. UDP payloads are disabled.
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.103
Cannot find nmap-mac-prefixes: Ethernet vendor correlation will not be performed
Host is up (0.0015s latency).
All 1026 scanned ports on 192.168.1.103 are filtered
MAC Address: 00:C0:A8:8D:69:D4 (Unknown)

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.12 seconds

I don't understand how the ports are all "filtered" if the firewall was never configured and doesn't appear to be running. Is "filtered" the same as "closed"?

I also tried one of your other suggestions; connecting the printer to my laptop and then trying to print from my Lubuntu pc via cups. That worked! I was able to print successfully. I then tried to print to it from the upstairs puppy pc but cups couldn't find it?

Then I booted the upstairs pc with the 5.2.5 live cd pfix=ram. When I hover my mouse over the firewall icon in the system tray it shows "Firewall Off, left click to run wizard". The I ran nmap again on the laptop downstairs targeting the pc and this time got:

# nmap 192.168.1.103

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2011-06-09 16:00 EDT
Unable to find nmap-services! Resorting to /etc/services
Cannot find nmap-payloads. UDP payloads are disabled.
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.103
Cannot find nmap-mac-prefixes: Ethernet vendor correlation will not be performed
Host is up (0.0060s latency).
All 1026 scanned ports on 192.168.1.103 are closed
MAC Address: 00:C0:A8:8D:69:D4 (Unknown)

Now the ports are all "closed" instead of "filtered"! I'm confused...

-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #11 Post by **rcrsn51** » Thu 09 Jun 2011, 20:34

Here are my tests in Lupu 525.

1. If the firewall is OFF and CUPS print sharing is NOT enabled, then nmap reports "all ports closed".

2. If the firewall is OFF and CUPS print sharing IS enabled, nmap shows "port 631/tcp open".

3. If the firewall is ON, nmap shows "all ports filtered".

rcrsn51 · #12 Post by **rcrsn51** » Thu 09 Jun 2011, 20:54

Try manually killing the firewall with

Code: Select all

/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall stop

Valinote · #13 Post by **Valinote** » Fri 10 Jun 2011, 16:41

OMG... It's working!!! I can finally print from my laptop to the photosmart 3100 attached to my pc upstairs!.

Per your suggestions, I executed "/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall stop" on the problem print server and it verified to me that it was turning the firewall off. Then from the client, nmap finally indicated "port 631/tcp open"! A test page printed from CUPS confirmed all was now good.

Not sure why I had to do this, as I never configured the firewall on that pc and the icon in the system tray shows "Firewall Off"?! Anyway it works now and I'm happy about that! Thank you so much for your kind patience in helping me resolve this issue.

Is there a file that runs on bootup where I could comment out the line that starts the firewall? Or maybe a file where I could insert the "/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall stop" command to turn it off after startup? I would like this to happen automatically in case someone other than myself reboots the pc.

.-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #14 Post by **rcrsn51** » Fri 10 Jun 2011, 17:11

Look in the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Does it contain a line that starts the firewall?

It sounds like this beta version of Lupu was turning on the firewall by default. There was a long thread here. about the wisdom of this.

Valinote · #15 Post by **Valinote** » Fri 10 Jun 2011, 19:51

I found that both my beta Puppy 2.4.2 and Lupu 5.2 have the following in their /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:

if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall ];
then /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall start

I commented this statement out on both systems to keep the firewall from starting automatically upon boot. Now the printer works fine from both puppy and ubuntu clients, even if the server gets rebooted. Thanks again for all the wonderful advice!

-Steve D

rcrsn51 · #16 Post by **rcrsn51** » Fri 10 Jun 2011, 21:01

Glad to help.

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Sharing my CUPS printer

Sharing my CUPS printer