Unable to add the ipp network printer to cup server

[Krishnanudhaya]

Hi Team,

I would like to add the network printer to cups server using http call ( printer_host_name, port).

I couldn't find the way to add the printer to cupserver from cups api documentation.

Please share the cup api which allows to add ipp network printer into cups and share the different approaches to connect the printer.

Currently, I have connecting the cup server with cups4j library through java.

Thanks

[michaelrsweet]

See the CUPS Implementation of IPP, specifically the information about the CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer operation. The "ppd-name" attribute will have a value of 'everywhere' for an IPP Everywhere printer, otherwise you need to specify a driver/model name (lpinfo -m) corresponding to the printer.

For a C code example, look at the "lpadmin.c" file in the CUPS source code.

[Krishnanudhaya]

Thank you for the response.

[gmuth]

@michaelrsweet, I tried to add an ipp printer to CUPS on macOS as you described - especially with "ppd-name=everywhere". However it does not work on macOS 12.6 with CUPS 2.3.4:

    CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer:
        attributes-charset (charset) = utf-8
        attributes-natural-language (naturalLanguage) = en
        printer-uri (uri) = ipps://localhost:631/printers/x3
        device-uri (uri) = ipp://192.168.2.145
        printer-info (textWithoutLanguage) = x3_Info
        printer-location (textWithoutLanguage) = x3_Location
        ppd-name (nameWithoutLanguage) = everywhere

        RECEIVED: 115 bytes in response
        status-code = server-error-internal-error (Unable to copy PPD file.)
        attributes-charset (charset) = utf-8
        attributes-natural-language (naturalLanguage) = en
        status-message (textWithoutLanguage) = Unable to copy PPD file.

because there is no such file:

/var/log/cups/error_log:
[cups-driverd] Unable to open \"/usr/share/cups/model/everywhere\" - No such file or directory
copy_model: empty PPD file
[Client 319] Returning IPP server-error-internal-error for CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer (ipps://localhost:631/printers/x3) from localhost.

My ipptool test case is documented here: https://github.com/gmuth/ipp-client-kotlin/tree/master/issues/%2310

[michaelrsweet]

@gmuth macOS uses an old version of CUPS that doesn't support the "everywhere" virtual PPD; instead, the "lpadmin" command and "admin.cgi" programs did the PPD generation and provided the PPD file as an attachment.

[gmuth]

Ok, on macOS I should be able to generate the PPD with ipp2ppd:
Usage: ipp2ppd <printer_uri> <input_ppd_path>
What is the correct input_ppd_path for macOS?

[michaelrsweet]

@gmuth It can be anything, including /dev/null - IIRC it is used to update a print queue.