Selfhosted

45027 readers

894 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Web printing (feddit.it)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi!

I have setup ScanServJS which is an awesome web page that access your scanner and let you scan and download the scanned pages from your self hosted web server. I have the scanner configured via sane locally on the server and now I can scan via web from whatever device (phone, laptop, tablet, whatever) with the same consistent web interface for everyone. No need to configure drivers anywhere else.

I want to do the same with printing. On my server, the printer is already configured using CUPS, and I can print from Linux laptops via shared cups printer. But that require a setup anyway, and while I could make it work for phones and tablets, I want to avoid that

I would like to setup a nice web page, like for the scanner, where the users no matter the device they use, can upload files and print them. Without installing nor configuring anything on their devices.

Is there anything that I can self-host to this end?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I want to print from a web page: upload the file, hit print button.

In this way I can print from whatever device I want even without any driver installed or configuration.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I known cups can share printers and queues.

What is unclear?

I don't want to pull drivers or install cups on devices. I want to print from anywhere just uploading a file to a web page.

If I have lots of devices or just want to let somebody print from his phone/tablet without installing or configuring anything...

With cups I still need to touch the system or the device somehow to let it print.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You don't have to install drivers or CUPS on client devices. Linux and Android support IPP out of the box. Just make sure your CUPS on the server is multicasting to the LAN.

You may need to install Avahi on the server if it's not already (that's what does the actual multicasting). The printer(s) should then auto magically appear in the print dialogs on apps on Linux clients and in the printer service on Android.

On Linux it may take a few seconds to appear after you turn it on and may not appear when it's off. On Android it shows up anyways as long as the CUPS server is on.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It still requires the device to be capable to print...

And the user to find the printer select it and so on. And must expose more ports on the network beside 443...

So, indeed cups is a great solution, but not to the problem I want to solve.

I do use cups in fact for the trusted part of the network, driverless printing for windows and Linux. Android doesn't even need cups since it picks up the printer directly from the printer itself (AirPrint or whatevee that's called).