Linux Printer Sharing With Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard
After upgrading to Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5, I found that my printers no longer existed. So I went to http://localhost:631 and tried adding my Gentoo CUPS printer share like I did before, but it refused to show up in the printers list. 
After some searching on the net, it seems that Apple has somewhat broken the way that it deals with Linux CUPS shares. Apparently it only searches for printers via Bounjour. In any case, I found a fix that works perfectly. Alessandro Dellavedova posted a fix for the problem over on the Apple support forums. Below is a slightly more detailed version of what he did.
WARNING: You will need administrator privileges to proceed with this fix.
- Open System Preferences.
- Open Print & Fax.
- Right-click in the printer’s pane and select “Reset printing system…”
- Open Terminal and type the following:
sudo nano /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
- Modify the first few lines such that they look similar to the following:
Browsing On
BrowseOrder allow,deny
BrowseAllow all
BrowseProtocols all
BrowseRemoteProtocols all
BrowsePoll <Your CUPS Server domain or IP>:631
BrowsePort 631 - Save the file
- Restart the printing subsystem by typing in the following:
sudo killall -HUP cupsd
Now you should be able to see and add the printers on your Linux share.
8 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Saved my day! Thanks!
Wish I had found your instructions a few hours earlier, before spending a frustrating time trying to set up printing from my son’s Macbook running Leopard on my Linux network. I could not figure out why Tiger had no problem finding my network printer, but Leopard could not.
Your instructions fixed the problem perfectly.
Thanks a bunch!
J
You are amazing.
Thank you.
I followed your instructions and then reinstalled the printer through System Preferences/Printers (otherwise it wouldn’t work on my iMac). However I tried to configure this printer on my PC running under Ubuntu Linux, using CUPS but it did not work.
I specified:
Internet printing protocol (http)
URI: http://my_imac_local_ip:631
Make: Generic
Model/driver: Generic Postscript Footmatic/Postscript
When I try the test page, nothing comes out (the job is pending) and the state description I get from CUPS is
stopped, accepting jobs, published.
I also tried to put the specific Make (HP LaserPrinter M1005 MFP) but it did not work either.
Any hints would be appreciated!
– tsf
Hey I just tried this and still am not able to find any printers shared through cups. Is there something that Im missing here?
Exactly the same conf:
-gentoo linux cups server
-mac osx 10.5 client
worked for me, thanks!
Fantastic. Printing now works after months of “why on earth doesn’t this work and when will they fix it?”. Thanks!
Thanks a lot. I wonder why Apple screwed it and they didn’t publish any document to fix this problem.