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With our new 21,5"-iMac, we bought the first Mac system for our Windows/Linux-oriented office. Hence we don’t have a lot of experience in using Mac OS X.

I started to set up everything and it ran quite well so far until I reached the configuration of our network printers. In our company we use a Linux system running a CUPS-server. This server holds the configuration of all queues. All changes regarding settings or even additional printers are made there.

As we do not want to make changes on every client system if new printers join the infrastructure, we forward all print jobs to the remote CUPS print server. This saves a lot of time instead of configuring printers via IPP or equivalent.

To make this work on Mac OS X, I found a link with the information I needed: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2004011920201534

The .cupsrc-file (hidden file) in the home directory containing the line

ServerName <myserver>

will instruct the local CUPS system to receive remote print queues from our print server.

After saving the file, the GUI configuration tool for printers in Mac OS X (System Preferences… -> Print & Fax) shows all remote queues running on the central CUPS server.

But after I upgraded to Mac OS X 1.7 “Lion”, the GUI doesn’t show the queues anymore. I have no idea what to do and even Apple Support (registered owner of CUPS system) couldn’t help me out with that. They only pointed to the CUPS configuration file (/etc/cups/cupsd.conf), but I do not know the right setting there for printing to remote queues. Also, the web interface running on localhost:631 couldn’t help me… Any ideas?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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The release notes for CUPS 1.5 mention that

CUPS no longer supports the old ~/.cupsrc or ~/.lpoptions files from CUPS 1.1.x. The ~/.cups/client.conf and ~/.cups/lpoptions files that were introduced in CUPS 1.2 must now be used.

Have you tried putting the line

ServerName print-server

into ~/.cups/client.conf?

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  • yes, I tried to move the 'client.conf' file to to '.cups/' directory inside my home directory.. Doesn't seem to work! Is there a possible central setting for all users running this machine?
    – Master of Celebration
    Commented Jul 29, 2011 at 12:38
  • Yeah, I'm having the same issue, and I've already had the files name correctly. What I think our particular issues is though is that our old Linux CUPS server running v1.1 can no longer work with the CUPS 1.5 client on the Lion machines.
    – user9617
    Commented Aug 9, 2011 at 19:39
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Set up /etc/cups/client.conf correctly for your environment so that the cups printers display in the print config dialog.

To get the queues to display in the applications as a choice, make each printer the default printer once. Distribute the resulting com.apple.print.favorites.plist to users with mcx or copy to ~/Library/Preferences

It uses the PPDs on the server. No client config necessary!

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1

This is an old question, but I just face the same problem without finding any quick solution.

CUPS documentation indicates that the use of ServerName "does not work on OS X 10.7 or later because sandboxed applications do not always have direct network access." :'(

One possible workaround is to use the terminal and send the jobs to the server using the lp/lpstat command. You must specify the server with the option -h. Remark that this won't work for graphical applications.

To list the printers:

$ lpstat -h <SERVER ADDRESS> -a

To print a PDF file:

$ lp -h <SERVER ADDRESS> -d <PRINTER QUEUE> <PDF TO PRINT>

You can put everithing into two scripts: lptb and lptbstat.

lptb: 

#!/bin/sh

LP_COMMAND=$(which lp)
CUPS_SERVER="<SERVER ADDRESS>"
PRINTER="${PRINTER:-<DEFAULT PRINT>}"

CUPS_GSSSERVICENAME=ipp ${LP_COMMAND} -h "${CUPS_SERVER}" -d "${PRINTER}" "$@"

lptbstat:

#!/bin/sh

LP_COMMAND=$(which lpstat)
CUPS_SERVER="<YOUR SERVER>"

${LP_COMMAND} -h "${CUPS_SERVER}" "$@"

To show the list of queues you do:

$ lptbstat -a

Print a PDF:

$ lptb <PDF>

Print a PDF using a specific queue:

$ PRINT="<MY GREAT PRINTER>" lptb <PDF>
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I know this is old but I if I setup a printer on my cups(ubuntu) server, I can now print successfully from a Mac. This works on Catalina and Big Sur.

On windows the printer address is http://192.168.1.10:631/printers/HP4250

On Mac I had to put
Address: 192.168.1.10:631
Choose: IPP (Internet printing protocol)
Queue: /printers/HP4250

I use the generic postscript driver, but that might be different for your setup.

Hope this helps someone else as I wasted more than an hour trying to find a working solution.

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It works when the CUPS network server is added via lpadmin. It seems it is not very well known!

lpadmin -p Canon_iP7250 -E -v ipp://cups-server/printers/Canon_iP7250 -m everywhere

  • -p Printer_Name: Sets the name of the printer as it will appear on your Mac.

  • -E enables and accepts jobs on the printer.

  • -m everywhere option tells CUPS to use the driverless printing feature, which is compatible with IPP Everywhere printers. If the printer requires a specific PPD file, you would replace everywhere with the path to the PPD file.

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