Printing with CUPS in openSUSE 10.3 (Linux)

It's been ages since I've posted. In February I started a new company (Londata), and that has been keeping me very busy. I've not had enough time to read the blogs I like to read,  let alone find the time to write anything.

However, I've finally solved a problem that has been gnawing at me, so that seemed like a good reason to take the time to write.  I installed openSUSE 10.3 back in October, and since that time I haven't been able to print anything from openSUSE! Now, that might seem intolerable to some of you, but I don't print a lot of stuff, so it wasn't enough to put me off openSUSE 10.3, but it has been inconvenient.

I couldn't print from my deskside PC, which is my print server. So no surprise that I couldn't print remotely from my laptop. However, the big surprise was that I could print remotely from Windows XP (using Samba), either from machines running XP directly, or from VMware virtual machines running XP (we don't run any other variety of Windows here at Casa Coates at present).  How galling is that? I had a Linux print server running, but could only print if I printed from Windows. Anyway, that is what I have been doing, copying files across to Windows on those occasions when I actually needed to print something.

Today, I decided to look around for a solution. I was sure I couldn't be the only one with this issue; at least, I  hoped I wasn't the only one. I quick search suggested other people have this problem, but I didn't come across an obvious solution. However,  I solved my problem anyway. Here is what I did.

My printer is a USB printer, set up with CUPS so that it can be accessed remotely. On my print server, you can access the CUPS printer information using the URL

http://localhost:631/printers/

I went into the entry for my printer (which is called “printer”), and vainly tried to print a test page, just to see if any recent openSUSE updates had changed anything. However, I then noticed a “Modify Printer” button that I hadn't tried before. When I tried it, it asked for the same information that YaST asks for when setting up a printer. I went through and set things up this way, then tried to print a test page again.  This time it worked! So, it seems that YaST doesn't quite get the printer setup right in openSUSE 10.3. That's frustrating, but I'm glad there is a solution. It worked for me; if you are having the same problem, I hope it works for you too.