Hi all, happy start of the new week! 
Setting up my new 2020 generation IPFire Systems (with IPFire 2.25 (x86_64) - Core Update 144), I also changed WLAN from 2.5GHz 802.11gn to 5GHz 802.11.ac. For some WLAN clients, e.g. printers that can only connect on 2.4 GHz, I had to find thus alternative ways to still be available within the network.
In case of my HP OfficeJet Pro 8710, I was able to do this by moving from WLAN to cable based Ethernet. Unfortunately though, the HP LaserJet Pro P1102w does not have an Ethernet port. I therefore investigated, if it was possible to connect it directly via USB to my new IPFire HW and share it from there - and it turns out to be working.
There are some complications in getting this done, which is why I decided to document that here.
- When setting up the printer in IPFire’s CUPS as described in https://wiki.ipfire.org/addons/cups , although the exact model can be chosen, it will not work due to the lack of certain required packages (e.g. CUPS filters as described in several IPFire forum posts, see https://forum.ipfire.org/viewtopic.php?t=21646). Instead quoting “You can set the Make to “Raw” and the Model to “Raw Queue”. Then the printing device needs to have an appropriate driver installed, which you need to select during installation of the network printer.” - That’s what I did, too. Afterwards, in the CUPS config page, it looks like this:
- On the client side (tested Ubuntu OS based clients so far), I tried different drivers, but printing only happened successfully when going for the foo2zjs-z2 driver. The configuration in CUPS then looks like that:
On the other side, printing for example did not work for me using the driver behind “HP LaserJet Professional P 1102w, hpcups 3.17.10, requires proprietary plugin” …
Happy printing!
M.
