iOS 6 doesn't recognize CUPS print shares

[Kyle2123]

Could not find an XML file for AirPrint Activator, but was able to view what it is sending out using Bonjour Browser. AirPrint Activator includes image/urf in the pdl but my avahi service file does not. If I add image/urf to the end of the pdl entry in my service file, I can see the printer on my device again, but when I print to it nothing ever comes out of the printer.

[Kyle2123]

It looks like up until iOS6, print jobs were being sent over as PDF, but now they are being sent in URF, which from what I can tell is some undocumented Apple format. There are some details here:

http://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/

Maybe someone that knows more about this can help - I have no idea where to go next.

[Sven Verhaegen]

org.cups.printers.plist
got changed with AirPrint



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
<dict>
<key>printer-name</key>
<string>Officejet_Pro_L7500__ED0E12_</string>
<key>printer-info</key>
<string>Officejet Pro L7500</string>
<key>printer-is-accepting-jobs</key>
<true/>
<key>printer-location</key>
<string></string>
<key>printer-make-and-model</key>
<string>HP Officejet Pro L7500 series</string>
<key>printer-state</key>
<integer>3</integer>
<key>printer-state-reasons</key>
<array>
<string>marker-supply-low-report</string>
<string>com.hp.m.1.15.2-report</string>
</array>
<key>printer-type</key>
<integer>75534364</integer>
<key>device-uri</key>
<string>dnssd://Officejet%20Pro%20L7500%20%5BED0E12%5D._pdl-datastream._tcp.local./?bidi</string>
</dict>
</array>
</plist>





Don't see anything except The printer type in my case
<key>printer-type</key> <integer>75534364</integer>
avahi is using : printer-type=0x2900c

Maybe I'll try later using 0x480901c and see what happens, I'm afraid it will not be that simple though .....

[Sven Verhaegen]

Can't find any other discussion on this (and therefore no possible solution)

[peedeegee]

Hi everyone.

Sorry, I don't run ubuntu, but CentOS servers instead.

I just wanted to say I'm experiencing the exact same problem as you guys on here. All the 'i' devices at my company that had upgraded to iOS 6 can no longer find our '(non)Airprint' printers provided by avahi and CUPS. The one device I could get hold of which was on 5.1.1 was still able to find and print to them though. This seems to confirm it's definitely been introduced with iOS 6 as you suspect.

I wasted several hours today because I thought I'd done something wrong as I've spent the last couple of weeks having a major sort out of our CUPS system. I'm reporting it on here hopefully so others may find this thread like I did and save them time. I hope you don't mind, seeing as we're both in the 'Linux' camp.

I did have a quick play with the /etc/avahi/services/printerxxx.service file to see if I could get the iDevices to see it, but to no avail. If I get some more time I'll have another and let you know any findings.

One thing that's suspect is that the iDevices still see a 'genuine' Airprint printer. We have some canon inkjets that when their bonjour service is turned on will be found by the iDevice. Any avahi printer running through the Linux servers however is not! Make what you will of that!

Hopefully something will turn up about this soon!

[kloostec]

I've made a little bit of progress on this at work, where we're running Debian 6 with CUPS and Avahi-daemon.

1) Apple changed the format of their airprint printing from PDF to URF with iOS 6.
2) URF is a unirast format file. This appears to be an apple-specific format
3) Printers that natively support Airprint have support for URF, so they continue working
4) CUPS does not natively support unirast, and so the avahi configuration files I generated do not mention that they support URF. Therefore, the Airprint printers do not show up in iOS 6.
5) Some guy wrote a very basic URF to PDF converter and published it in 2010 when iOS 4.2 came out, because apparently it was necessary then as well. https://github.com/superna9999/urftopdf
6) I've installed this on airprintstaff following these instuctions https://github.com/superna9999/urfto...tall-and-Usage and re-ran airprint-generate.py which now mentions URF support
7) The printers show up under iOS 6 now. The URF format decoding is not complete, though, so the print job must be set to "duplex off" when airprinting. This preference is ignored when the file is converted to PDF anyway (duplex is turned on).

It looks like URFtoPDF isn't fully developed at this point, but there's definitely a starting point.

Edit: thanks to previous posters in this thread for assistance in getting this far!

[RShapiro]

Thanks, kloostec! This worked for me (10.4) although I used Software Update to install the packages.

[Sven Verhaegen]

apt-get can't find the package (first guess is that I'm running 64 bits)


but been looking further on my mac ..... maybe this gives some ideas ....


seems I have a new or altered filter (maybe airprint activator?)
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 140864 19 sep 04:15 cgpdftoraster


mime type for airpint
# AirPrint type
image/urf urf string(0,UNIRAST<00>)


convs file:

application/pdf application/postscript 25 cgpdftops
application/pdf application/vnd.cups-raster 100 cgpdftoraster

# AirPrint
application/vnd.cups-raster image/urf 100 rastertourf
application/pdf image/urf 100 cgpdftoraster
application/vnd.apple-postscript image/urf 250 pstocupsraster
application/vnd.cups-postscript image/urf 250 pstocupsraster

# IPP Everywhere
application/pdf image/pwg-raster 100 cgpdftoraster



on ubuntu there's no cgpdftoraster but pdftoraster as filter ....

[Sven Verhaegen]

======= found it ===========

== updated instructions added more details ==
== and only added the really needed lines ==

it's easy

you need to create 2 files under
/usr/share/cups/mime

<> File 1 airprint.types with content below
more airprint.types
#
# "$Id: $"
#
# AirPrint type
image/urf urf string(0,UNIRAST<00>)
#
# End of "$Id: $".
#


<> file2
more airprint.convs
#
# "$Id: $"
#
# AirPrint
# Updated list with minimal set 25 Sept
image/urf application/pdf 100 pdftoraster
#
# End of "$Id: $".
#



<> restart cups
sudo service cups restart

<> optionally get airprint-generate.py
#=See here for more info on the script https://github.com/tjfontaine/airprint-generate (I downloaded the script on my home dir)
#== depending on your system you might need to change the first line to
#!/usr/bin/env python2
#== in order to run it
cd
wget https://raw.github.com/tjfontaine/ai...nt-generate.py

<> regenerate the file services file
cd
python airprint-generate.py

<> copy the files to /etc/avahi/services
sudo cp *services /etc/avahi/services

<> restart avahi (not sure this is needed)
sudo service avahi-daemon restart

if you implemented the urftopdf you might want to roll that back
make sure
urftopdf.types
urftopdf.convs
are gone in /usr/share/cups/mime after the remove .... (didn't install it just looked at the code)

A good night !

oh yeah ..........
can someone make sure this is included in the 12.04 CUPS ?

[jdawgvh]

This solution worked for me:

http://atxconsulting.com/posts/Autom...CUPS_printers/