Set up raspberry pi as a printing server using cups and file server using samba.

PREPARATION

Soft- and hardware specs: I’m using:

• Raspberry Pi 3B+ Model
• Raspberry Pi OS (aka. Raspbian)
• Brother DCP-7055 Printer

TIP: Setup Raspbian SSH connection without a monitor:

for the newest Raspberry Pi OS, SSH is not enabled by default. To enable SSH without a monitor: create a file named ssh under /boot directory.

Printer Drivers

Cups doesn’t support some of the printers out of the box (like my brother dcp-7055). You may need to manually find and install the driver for your printer.

In my case, it’s as simple as installing the package brlaser:

apt-get install printer-driver-brlaser

(SEE https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser)

SETTING UP CUPS

First install the cups package.

apt-get install cups

Give pi user privileges to configure cups (suppose you are using raspberry, whose default user is pi).

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

Edit cups config, so that we can configure cups via network panel. Edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf as following:

change the line

Listen localhost:631

to

Listen 0.0.0.0:631

change

Browsing On
BrowseLocalProtocols dnssd

to

Browsing On
BrowseAllow all
BrowseAddressLocalProtocols CUPS dnssd
BrowseAddress @LOCA

Find the following three sections:

<Location />
<Location /admin>
<Limit Create-Job Print-job Print-URI Validate-Job>

And add this line to each

allow 192.168.0.*

NOTE: change this address accordingly to your machine and router configs.

Now restart the cups service.

sudo service cups stop
sudo service cups start

Well, I don’t know why, but service cups reload won’t work….

add printer

Access the web config panel via port 631, e.g. 192.168.1.2:631 from browser. Go to Administration page, and hit “add printer”. Make sure the printer is connected to the Pi before doing this.

And follow the instruction.

In the right hand side of Administration page, mark “Share Printers connected to this system”. Now the printer server should work~

Setting up samba

… well maybe update this post later