Netgear Fwg114p Router as Print Server

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There are a lot of routers that have an included printserver. They usually only delivers with windows-information and no support is given to linux.

The problem when printing to those printservers is that there are no documentation of what port should be used. I don't know if this particular port works on other similar printservers.

Netgear fwg114p is a router, firewall, vpn-server and printserver with usb-port. This guide also works for the Netgear PS101 a parallel print server.

Set it up

  1. Download the packets needed (i.e. the printing-system and the filters needed. In my case hpijs and foomatic. That depends on what printer you have.)
    • # pacman -Sy cups, hpijs, foomatic
  2. Make sure your printer could be connected through this kind of printserver.
    • (Look in list of compatible printers and/or check by using a windowsmachine that can use the software normally delivered with the box)
    • Connect the printer to the print-server-box
  3. Start CUPS
    • (See CUPS setup for details on cups start and downloading, filters, etc)
  4. Connect to CUPS-server through web-interface http://localhost:631
    • Choose 'Add printer' and name it whatever you like
    • Choose 'LPD/LPR' socket
    • Write 'lpd://192.168.0.45/p1/' if your print-server-box have an ip-adress of 192.168.0.45 (note that it wouldn't work for me until I added the trailing '/')
    • Choose your printer from the list.
      • (The list will change when one downloads packages so if your printer is not in the list - just stop and check at www.archlinux.org what package to get in order to get the appropriate filters for your printer)
  5. Print a test-page and see that everything works fine!

Problems

I have had problems to get cups work properly the last half year, and each time I had to reinstall perl to get it to work. When it once worked there were no problems.

Many usb-printers are slightly more than a shell (GID-printers) and those might not be possible to connect to a print-server since they need software-installation from the computer each start-up. Some of them can be used in linux but none can be used connected to a print-server of this kind (It doesn't matter if one uses windows or linux)

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