Carnegie Mellon University

ChemE Computing

Chemical Engineering Computing

Printing from a Linux Machine

Chemical Engineering Department printers are available from any on campus wired or wireless connection.

This procedure is for personally owned computers, NOT for shared computers. It involves storing your password in plain text in the CUPS configuration file. Perform this prcoedure at your own risk. We recommend using drive encryption on mobile devices in order to prevent your password from being compromised if your computer is lost or stolen

Prerequisites

Install CUPS - CentOS: yum install cups, Ubuntu: apt install cups
Install SAMBA - CentOS:yum install smaba-client, Ubuntu apt install samba-client

Install Printer

**You need the printer name in order to install. You can find a list of department printers here: Printer List

  1. Open the CUPS administration site in a web browser http://127.0.0.1:631 and click the “administration” tab. Choose Add Printer
  2. Next you will be prompted to choose the type of printing. Here you will want to choose Windows Printer via SAMBA. In some situations you may encounter needing to directly enter a device URI. In this case skip ahead to step 3.
  3. Now you will need to enter a properly formatted *Device URI to connect to your shared printer. The proper form of the Device URI for ChemE printers is below:

    smb://AndrewID:AndrewPassword@andrew.ad.cmu.edu/cheme-printers.cheme.cmu.edu/PrinterRoom%20PrinterModel

    Replace "AndrewID" with your AndrewID, "AndrewPassword" with your password and "PrinterRoom%20PrinterModel" with the name%20model of the printer from the list (above)
    IE:DHA226 HPCP5525 should be entered as DHA226%20HPCP5525

  4. After specifying the Device URI, you will need to name your printer. This is how end users will see this device in their printer list.

  5. Selecting a driver will be your next step. Most printers that have been out for a while provide a very good choice of drivers. If your Linux distribution does not seem to include the drivers for your device that you need, please choose an earlier model in the same series.

  6. Once the printer is added, it should be selectable in applications. When viewing the queue in Windows, the job’s owner will list as the user specified in the Device URI, and not as the user logged in. Also no document title will be available.