After setting up IPFire as my main firewall, I’m having issues with a network printer. Devices on the LAN can access the internet normally, but the printer sometimes becomes unreachable, and printing test pages fails intermittently.
I’ve checked basic firewall rules and ensured that the printer and client PCs are on the same green network. Disabling the firewall temporarily makes the printer work again, so it seems related to IPFire rules or services.
Has anyone faced similar printer connectivity issues with IPFire?
Are there specific ports, services, or firewall settings that need to be allowed for reliable network printing?
what operating systems are running on your client PC
I’ve run network printing for many years from Linux client PC, with an IPFire firewall protecting the LAN. As noted by @pscar13, IPFire does not filter printing.
If you have firewall also running on the client then that is likely to filter printing, requiring port 631 to be opened, on Linux clients.
Network printers that are older than ~2010 could also require a printer setup on each client PC. You are likely to have that, if printing was working.
Hello, when I need to troubleshoot a network printer I usually use tcpdump to observe the traffic and its flow. If packets reach the printer but it does not respond, the fault may be hardware-related; if the printer returns traffic, the issue may lie on the client side.
Tcpdump is installed with pakfire. One command you can use as a reference is shown below, interface can be green0 and simply adjust the IP address and port to match your environment:
tcpdump -i <interface> -n host <PRINTER_IP> and port <PORT>