To install Printer in 8.3 version?

[natliv]

Hello, FreeNAS Community,

Reading a lot of complicated instructions of how to add a printer to FreeNAS server, I paid attention that they were all talking about 0.7 version. All these posts are old (2-4 years).

Is it still impossible to install Printer to a FreeNAS 8.3? (/boot/kernel/* is not writable even for root account)

Are there any plans to add it to FreeNAS 9?

Thank you in advance for your response.

 

[ProtoSD]

Ni Natliv,

Be careful about where you post, you just posted your question in the HowTo section of the forums.

I recently saw a post about someone attempting to create a CUPS plugin, but I'm not sure how far they got. Most people that try to write plugins decide it's easier to just install the packages or build the ports inside the plugin jail. I'm 100% certain we'll see this in 9.1, probably not right away though.

If it's something you want to try now, read the documentation about installing the Plugin Jail (it's a plugin), then you can go inside that and install most apps like you would with a normal FreeBSD system. CUPS shouldn't be that hard.

 

[keithg]

I am looking for this as well. I have a jail set up and am running minidlna and firefly. I have also set up a minecraft server in the jail. Now, I am setting up a cups server and want to hook a printer to the lpt port. I have cups running, but no hardware ports are visible, so I cannot set up the printer. I have grepped and googled, but cannot find anything which helps me to make the hardware ports lpt1 (lp0?) visible to the jail.

I used this guide getting CUPS set up in the jail.
https://sites.google.com/site/tux821/myfreebsdnotes
I did not build the packages, but installed them:
pkg_add -rv cups
pkg_add -rv gutenprint
edited cups.conf and now I can see the cups web page from my linux machines.

I added the devfs.rules, but still no ports to put printers on.
I tried the other things assuming that the usb stuff may point me the way to go, but it is all over my head. Any help?

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Keithg,

I don't have time to dig into this, but it sounds like you already figured out or tried to figure out devfs.rules which is good. Have you tried just ssh'ing into FreeNAS (not into the jail) and seeing if the device(s) are available there? The devfs.rules won't help if FreeNAS doesn't see anything to pass through to the jail.

 

[keithg]

Yes, lpt0 is available on the NAS:
$ ls /dev/lp*
/dev/lpt0 /dev/lpt0.ctl

so the answer is in devfs.rules... I am a linux guy but more of a recipe user so I will look into this. Any further help appreciated.

Keith

 

[keithg]

Yes, lpt0 is available on the NAS:
$ ls /dev/lp*
/dev/lpt0 /dev/lpt0.ctl

so the answer is in devfs.rules... I am a linux guy but more of a recipe user so I will look into this. Any further help appreciated.

Keith

Ok, I put it all in the devfs.rules and I think I understand it, but now I have no clue as to 1) how to make the devs available in the jail and 2) how to make cups see them.

I was able to mount the dev directors in the jail at one point, but cups still did not see that there was a /dev/lp0 so I could not create a printer definition.

Any help appreciated.

 

[ProtoSD]

My advice would to be wait until 9.1 comes out, there are going to be a lot of MAJOR changes to the jail system and none of this might be necessary. What you could try is downloading a copy of PCBSD 9.1 since it already has the jail changes that are coming and see if you can get the devices to show up in the jail. There will be different types of jails, so if you decide to try that, pick the "plugin" jail type.

I'm sorry I can't really help more because I don't have a printer and have other stuff I'm working on.