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Driverless printing with CUPS. Requires at least CUPS 2.2.2 and version 1.13.0 of cups-filters.

The Concept of Driverless Printing

Driverless printing is targeted at the client side of printing and refers to the ability of the client device (computer, smartphone, tablet, laptop etc) to print without having to install any static capability files or drivers (manufacturer-specific or otherwise) on the client.

There is a variety of methods for a client to submit a job to a driverless printing system:

This page is intended to highlight and explain driverless printing using packages provided by Debian so not all these methods will receive attention here. Furthermore, details for using iOS and Android mobile clients are not treated.

Driverless Printing and Printers

A traditional printing system based on CUPS, cups-filters and cups-browsed generally obtains information about printer features and capabilities from what is stored in a static capability file such as a PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file. This static file is stored on the client device (desktop computer, laptop, tablet etc) itself. If the PPD on the client requires the sending of a job using a non-standardised Page Description Language (PDL) a driver would be required for converting to the printer-specific PDL and that driver too would have to be on the client. A client that regularly connected to different printers would have to maintain static capability files and drivers for each printer.

This is not seen as an acceptable situation for mobile clients, which may have limited storage for PPDs and drivers and which may lack resources, such as battery power. Neither is it deemed particularly realistic for a user to have to set up or reconfigure a mobile device for each printer that is encountered. This requires a level of expertise and a time and effort commitment that cannot be assumed to be possessed.

The response of printer manufacturers to the desire for driverless printing has been to enhance their printers in the following way:

Note that we are talking here about sending a job directly to a printer, not to a print queue being advertised by CUPS.

PDLs for Driverless Printing

Two raster formats, Apple raster and PWG raster, have been developed to implement driverless printing.

In the case of PWG raster the raster format was chosen because it is a simpler format than that of the high-level languages, which also require significant resources on the printer. Printer-embedded PostScript interpreters can be buggy and/or slow and PostScript also has the disadvantage that it makes interoperability between client and printer difficult because PostScript does not fit cleanly with the IPP and PWG models. Streaming was chosen to send a job to a printer rather than generating a file that is downloaded and then printed. This way large jobs don't take up too much memory or storage space on the printer and printing commences with minimum delay.

CUPS: PWG and Apple Raster

The abilitity to create Apple raster files has been added to the existing PWG raster support in CUPS and made its appearence in CUPS 2.2.2; this enhancement was soon applied in version 1.13.0 of cups-filters and cups-browsed. Complete support for IPP Everywhere printers was already in Debian, so, with CUPS 2.2.2, AirPrint printers joined the class of printers that will work driverless with Debian.

With the incorporation of the two raster formats as a PDL in CUPS, IPP 2.0 to allow for querying the capabilities information from the printer and Bonjour/DNS-SD to find the printers in the network, Debian has everything needed for driverless printing to an IPP printer.

The processing of a job to create an Apple raster file is taken care of by CUPS' rastertopwg filter. The file produced by the filter is sent directly to the printer with IPP so no vendor-specific filters are involved. This opens up the possibility of avoiding the use of non-free drivers on the server used for printing.

Creating a Driverless Print Queue with lpadmin

Some familiarity with a device-uri is assumed in this section.

With a single AirPrint printer on the network a partial output from lpinfo -v could be:

network dnssd://HP%20ENVY%204500%20series%20%5BFAFAC2%5D._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=1c852a4d-b800-1f08-abcd-308d99fafac2
network socket://192.168.7.235:9100
network ipp://envy4500.local:631/ipp/print

The snmp backend has found the printer will accept jobs on port 9100 (socket://192...). Queues using this device-uri would need to be set up with a PPD specified with the -m or -P option of lpadmin, so would not be driverless.

The ENVY 4500 has also been discovered from the printer's Bonjour broadcasts using the dnssd and ipp backends. Both these URIs are equally stable and can be used for driverless printing, with a dnssd URI being preferred if the ipp URI is using a numeric IP address.

The device-uri for the printer can also be found with the ippfind or driverless utilities.

ippfind                         (Shows IPP printers and print queues).
ippfind -T 5                    (Possibly more reliable).
ippfind ! --txt printer-type    (Show IPP printers only).

driverless                  (To get the device-uri).
driverless list             (For the device-uri and printer metadata).
driverless device-uri       (Generate a PPD for the printer at device-uri).

A queue for driverless printing from a client is now set up with

lpadmin -p <print_queue_name> -v <device-uri> -E -m everywhere

The everywhere model causes the printer referred to by the -v option to be queried. A list of printer capabilities is returned and a PPD is automatically generated by CUPS for use by command line programs and applications.

If the -v option is the URI of a queue on a remote CUPS server, this technique can create a driverless queue on the client for a remote non-raw queue. This is the method employed when CUPS sets up a temporary queue on a client.

Creating a Driverless Print Queue with the CUPS Web Interface

Some familiarity with the CUPS web interface is assumed in this section.

Creating a Driverless Print Queue with system-config-printer

Some familiarity with system-config-printer is assumed in this section.

Creating a Driverless Print Queue with cups-browsed

This method leads to a fully automatic discovery of an AirPrint or IPP Everywhere printer, sets up a print queue and creates a PPD for it. The PPD is used to display printer options for command line programs and in applications. There are just two operations a user has to carry out.

CreateIPPPrinterQueues all
or
CreateIPPPrinterQueues driverless

systemctl restart cups-browsed

lpstat -t
and
lpoptions -p <queue_name> -l

CUPS 2.2.4 and Driverless Printing

CUPS' ability directly to browse the DNS-SD (Bonjour) broadcasts of remote print queues and printers, previously absent, was introduced in CUPS 2.2.4. This means that a system with CUPS 2.2.4 or later (such as Debian 10.x.x) will display remote queues and printers with lpstat -e and in the print dialogs of some applications without cups-browsed (needed on Debian 8.x.x and Debian 9.x.x for remote queue management) being on the system. No action on the part of the user is required.

Essentially, CUPS uses its CupsGetDests and CupsEnumDests functions to discover shared queues and printers which can be printed to on the local network and makes them available for display in an application. Whether or not the application displays them depends on the chosen application. Printing to an enumerated entry leads to the formation of a temporary queue.

Let us consider the behaviour of the GTK print dialog in a little more detail. The applications using it produce a PDF with libcairo2. A Debian CUPS server will have no trouble accepting and printing this PDF when it is sent to a remote queue listed in the dialog. If the entry is a remote printer, the printer has to be able to accept and process the PDF. This might not be the case, so the dialog will display

print      <Location>  Rejecting Jobs

A check with avahi-browse might reveal for the printer:

pdl=application/vnd.hp-PCL,image/jpeg,application/PCLm,image/urf

showing that PDF is not an accepted Page Description Language.

The solution is to put cups-browsed on the system and, in cups-browsed.conf, have cups-browsed create permanent, local queues (rather than the CUPS temporary queues) for remote queues and printers with

UseCUPSgeneratedPPDs No

It very likely that only the entry for the remote printer is wanted, so alter cups-browsed.conf to have

CreateRemoteCUPSPrinterQueues No

Note that managing queues and printers in the GTK dialog in this way also leads to other dialogs and the command line utilities following suit.

CUPS and Driverless Printing: Miscellaneous

http://<IP_address or host name of the printer>

The hostname can be obtained from the output of avahi-browse (see below). Make sure that IPP support and Bonjour broadcasting are enabled. The configuration options will probably be accessed under a Networking link and it could be that activating AirPrint is sufficient to activate both services.

                                     ->|--------------------------------------------> Printer
text -> texttopdf -> pdftopdf -> PDF ->| gstoraster -> rastertopwg -> PWG raster ---> Printer
                                     ->| gstoraster -> rastertopwg -> Apple raster -> Printer

avahi-browse -art | less

Identify your Bonjour-advertised IPP printer and look for entries beginning URF=... and pdl=... . If URF=... exists and pdl=... contains image/urf you have an AirPrint printer.

For an HP Envy 4502:

URF=CP1,MT1-2-8-9-10-11,OB9,OFU0,PQ3-4-5,RS300-600,SRGB24,W8-16,DEVW8-16,DEVRGB24-48,ADOBERGB24-48,DM3,IS1,V1.3
pdl=application/vnd.hp-PCL,image/jpeg,application/PCLm,image/urf

For a Brother MFC-J650DW:

URF = SRGB24,W8,CP1,IS1,MT1-8-11,OB9,PQ4-5,RS300,OFU0,V1.2,DM3
pdl = application/octet-stream,application/vnd.brother-hbp,image/pwg-raster,image/urf,image/jpeg

The pdl contains an additional image/pwg-raster. This printer will accept and print PWG raster files. It could be an IPP Everywhere printer, but that all depends on whether it fulfills all the criteria necessary for the manufacturer to self-certify it with the Printer Working Group (PWG). However, it is possible the printer IPP implementation is sufficient for driverless printing to be used with CUPS.

Acknowledgements

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> for guiding and supporting CUPS 2.2.2, cups-filters and cups-browsed through the experimental archive and into unstable. Till Kamppeter <till.kamppeter@gmail.com> for his integration of cups-filters and cups-browsed with CUPS 2.2.2. Michael R. Sweet <msweet@apple.com> for developing the rastertopwg filter to support Apple raster.

See Also