ssh tunnel to a remote CUPS server

Question

There is a CUPS server beyond a firewall and I'd like to use it's printers. I have ssh access to computers that can access the CUPS server, and can get at the servers web interface by forwarding say port 1631. I cannot forward port 631 as I've not got root access to anything on the servers network.

In Ubuntu's 'Printing' control panel, I can enter the address of a server, but I've not been able to connect through the forwarded port (localhost:1631, which is forwarded to the remote CUPS server's 631 port).

Any ideas?

Solution

Your best bet may be to treat the remote print spooler as a plain IPP host and create local queues that forward to the remote printers.

Assuming you have created an ssh tunnel forwarding requests to the local port 1631 to the remote system's port 631, try adding a new network print queue locally with the following device URI:

ipp://localhost:1631/printers/$remote_queue

Where $remote_queue is remote queue name. If CUPS doesn't know about the remote printer model but it had been set up with an appropriate PPD file, you can retrieve that PPD with the following command:

wget http://localhost:1631/printers/$remote_queue.ppd

After adding the local printer queue, click the Change... button next to Make and Model in the queue's properties window and follow the prompts to use the PPD.

Comments

[Toon Verstraelen]

This worked after the following change: use http instead of ipp. My PPD had a Cups filter, which I commented out on the client machine.