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Question

If you have an OS X print server, how does it work across subnets?

  • April 5, 2014
  • 3 replies
  • 25 views
chlaird
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I'm going crazy with this one.. hopefully someone out there has a similar setup and can help.

We're looking into setting up an OS X print server. That is, a mac-mini server with all of our printers on it as queues, which client machines then connect up to to print through (and pay using papercut)

The issue is that I CANNOT figure out how this works. Bonjour doesn't work across subnets, unless you do some fancy trickery in DNS (windows based) such as this: http://www.grouplogic.com/Knowledge/PDFUpload/Info/WanBonjour_1.pdf . So now, I can see the queue being broadcast on different subnets, and add it just fine. The issue is that on the same subnet, it prints just fine. But on a different subnet, it sees the printer and tries to run, but fails authentication in CUPS (and client side just says 'hold for authentication').

I need to bundle this up into a package and begin pushing it out soon, but I get the same Authentication when I push it out.

Has anyone experienced any success with this?

    3 replies

    F
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    • freddiecox
    • Contributor
    • April 5, 2014

    First off a disclaimer: I won't proclaim to be a network guru/wizzard/tech/genius at all.

    As Multicast DNS traffic was designed to NOT traverse subnets there is typically some wizardry that has to be done to allow that traffic across. My guess is the print server uses some additional multicast or broadcast traffic that isn't getting forwarded by your DNS trickery listed above. Since this is all Layer 3 traffic, I think you will need to look at configuring your router and/or switches to allow this.

    Cisco has a write up about using a Linux Bonjour gateway to reflect the bonjour traffic to the separate VLANs or Subnets. Not sure if this would help/work in your situation but thought I would share it:

    http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/aironet-1100-series-access-point/113443-cuwn-apple-bonjour-dg-00.html#deploy

    Edit: Pasting the correct URL.

    T
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    • tron_jones
    • Contributor
    • April 5, 2014

    You could check out the "Allow" command from CUPS.

    Enter this in the terminal to turn on the feature for web access.

    cupsctl WebInterface=yes

    Then navigate to the url:
    http://localhost:631/help/ref-cupsd-conf.html

    J
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    • jduvalmtb
    • Contributor
    • July 18, 2017

    I know this is old, but in case anyone else comes across this (after searching for answers the entire day), goes to the CUPS administration and enabling the option "Allow printing from the Internet" fixed the issue for me. Thanks for the tip.

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