So I am visiting some colleagues who have a CUPS server and insist that it is “Apple crap” and should work with my Macbook; but it doesn’t. So I have to add the printer using the hardware driver which annoys my colleague since he doesn’t want users messing up the hardware (understandably). Since I just wanted to print I just do it anyway and print the paper I wanted.
That was yesterday, since I don’t like annoying people I figure I will see what the net has to say about it. Turns out that by default OS X 10.5 doesn’t look for CUPS shared printers because CUPS has been replaced with Bonjour sharing. But it is extremely easy to turn on; In a terminal window enter the following:
sudo cupsctl BrowseProtocols='"cups dnssd"'
This command tells the printer browser to look for dnssd(Bonjour) AND cups shared printers (sudo is needed since you are editing configuration files with this command so care should be taken). Then you have to wait for a bit as CUPS servers only send information periodically. Voila, you should see all the printers shared in the “Default” tab of the add printer settings.
If you want to revert back to the original Bonjour ONLY browsing then run the command:
sudo cupsctl BrowseProtocols='"dnssd"'
Apple has a little info on this on their website but it doesn’t really advertise that it works with many linux/unix systems.
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