Networking a printer?

[Number3124]

Forgive me. I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about.

So, I have an HP Laserjet Professional P1606dn. Right now, I have it attached to a Mageia 4.1 box.

I'd like to be able to network it so that my Mageia 4.1 laptop and my two Windows 8 laptops can also print from it without having to unplug it from the Linux box. I suspect that Mageia can share a printer like Windows can, but I don't know.

Again, forgive my somewhat apparent ignorance on subject of printers. Thanks for the help.

[martinw]

It's easy to share the printer between machines running Mageia:

• Make sure the printer is shown as available on the machine it is connected to
• If you are using the software firewall, enable connections to the CUPS server (you need to do this on both machines)
• On the other machine, start the Mageia Control Centre
  
  • select the "Hardware" tab
  • click on "Setup printer(s),..."
  • click on the "Add" button
  • select "Find network printer"
  • in the "Host" box, enter the host name (or IP address) of the machine the printer is connected to
  • click on the "Find" button

This should find the printer and allow you to continue with the printer setup just as if it was a local printer.

I've never tried using a Linux printer from Windows, but this section on the Arch Wiki suggests it should be possible.

[doktor5000]

For the other Mageia box, it should be sufficient to verify enabled remote access to the printer via cups web frontend http://127.0.0.1:631/admin
On the right-hand side you can verify that the default setting is still in place

Server Settings:

Advanced ▶
☑ Share printers connected to this system

For the rest, that is described by Martin

[jkerr82508]

This page provides a more verbose illustrated version of the procedure described in the Arch wiki article:
http://www.gigamegablog.com/2012/09/03/ ... windows-8/

It worked for me when I tried it (about a year ago).

Jim

[martinw]

P.S. One thing I forgot to mention. I assume you are using a (wireless) router which creates a local network that allows your main PC and your laptops to communicate. You want to configure the router to always assign the same local IP address to your main PC, otherwise you'll have to modify the printer setup on the laptops any time the main PC gets assigned a different address.