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Selfhosting a printer (and scanner) server with UI

2 months ago by Alfredolin to c/selfhosted

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I think it would be nice if my guests could easily print and scan when they are visiting.

Printing should be relatively easy nowadays with the printer on the same network. Scanning is another story. I found this nice project which works very nicely.

However, I would love to have the same but for printing, that way I would not have to do device specific troubleshooting/helping when trying to print something from guests' devices.

There is this project, which has a screenshot of what seems to be exactly what I'm looking for, but the issues are unanswered, there is no release, the building of the project is lacking.

Dockerfiles are incomplete, they are lacking copy yarn.lock and api lacks db initialization. The ports seem to be hardcoded. And once built, it doesn't work or at least I didn't manage yet. I got the frontend finally up but can't login. My knowledge is very limited so I'm checking with you if there is anything similar in the landscape or anyone willing to help on that project. Unfortunately I am locked out of github.

CUPS didn't work for me as I can't see an upload option on the web UI.

edit: So I spent time on tweaking the akronae repo, and after a few corrections, adding CUPS and improvements, I managed to get something functional. If I have more time I might publish it. It's fully vibe coded though 'cause I couldn't be arsed learning TypeScript and shit, and the original repo has plenty of outdated dependencies which, same, I won't update because I don't have the skills.

cmnybo 16 points 2 months ago

The CUPS web UI is just for configuration. As long as the printer is shared, it should automatically show up in the printers list for any Linux PC on the same network.

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excess0680 7 points 2 months ago

The CUPS server should just work out of the box (not including printer setup) for Windows and Android as well. If the server you use is based on a recent-ish version from OpenPrinting (as it was on Debian 12, so about three years old), it should also work out of the box for iOS.

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tal 4 points 2 months ago

So, I'd just use Samba or whatever to share it too. It'll do a number of things better, like letting software render for an appropriate page size in the printer automatically.

However, OP is specifically trying to avoid using this route, because he's concerned about people having trouble with setting it up on their client devices, so he just wants to bypass all that and to have a Web UI where one uploads the document after it's been rendered to a PDF or similar.

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Onomatopoeia 13 points 2 months ago

Printing should be relatively easy nowadays

Hahahahahahahahahaha

I mean if you're making a statement that after decades of maturation this should be true, I wholeheartedly agree.

If the statement is of an observation of conditions today, oh, my sweet summer child.

Even commercial, enterprise-targeted stuff is junk today (looking at you Sharp, with your supposed LDAP-capable crap that just decides to lose it's fucking mind for no reason).

Neat idea you've put together though!

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Reannlegge 7 points 2 months ago

I have always used cups and never had problems with what you are talking about, however using the web ui is relatively new to me. SANE I have always had issues with no matter the UI I use.

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Shimitar 2 points 2 months ago

Op want to upload a file to a web GUI and print it from there, not share printers with other computer/ devices.

Also, scanservejs is the the sane web GUI to actually do the same with scanner.

For scanning it make sense as there are no shared scanning solutions across platforms. For printing, it's of little use as other pointed out you can print to cups from anything basically.

But o get the need for a web printing page, as uploading a file and hit print button is a zero setup, and while simple even remote cups printing is not 0% extra setup, you have at the very least to select a printer or hit "share as" and select a print service (android). YMMV

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rtxn 7 points 2 months ago

CUPS didn’t work for me as I can’t see an upload option on the web UI.

And you won't. For the purpose of printing, CUPS is a print server, not a web front-end. It facilitates communication between client devices and downstream printers through a unified open protocol that isn't manufacturer-dependent.

Printing is implemented through IPP, which is an HTTP-based protocol. You have to add the URL of the printer as it appears on the web UI (e.g. https://print.mydomain.net/printers/PRINTER_NAME) as a printer in the client device's printer manager. It's plug-and-play on Linux and Mac, and needs a driver (even if it's the generic PostScript driver) on Windows.

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isgleas 6 points 2 months ago

Attach document to an email and send it to a dedicated mailbox, and set such to automatically send the attachments for printing. No need to setup any UI other that your email client.

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tal 5 points 2 months ago

CUPS didn't work for me as I can't see an upload option on the web UI.

CUPS is really intended as the backend. Whatever software you run will talk to CUPS.

I've never used it, but Savapage appears to be such a frontend.

EDIT: It may be more elaborate than what you want. It looks like this thing is capable of being set up to run a commercial printing service. It can probably also do what you want, but it's going to have a lot of functionality that you wouldn't use if you're just running an unauthenticated, anyone-can-use-it system.

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warmaster 2 points 2 months ago

I've tried it. The UI is quite convoluted. With a fair bit of effort it does the job though, but it's far behind SANE in usability.

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vegetaaaaaaa 4 points 2 months ago

I use SANE for scanning.

  • install sane-utils
  • configure /etc/sane.d/saned.conf, list the IP adresses or network allowed to connect
  • start saned.socket

on your client (linux desktop)

  • add the SANE server IP to to the config echo "192.168.xx.xx" > /etc/sane.d/net.conf
  • list the scanners scanimage -L

The scanner is also automatically listed in scanning utilities like simple-scan etc. Don't know about phones or other devices, I assume there are scanner auto-discovery utilities; phones also have cameras so thy can scan on their own. I don't know about Web UIs, why not just use native printing/scanning features of guest devices?

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Shimitar 3 points 2 months ago

This won't work for Android windows and such devices. And it's a pain to setup, won't work 100% and some scanners are ven worse .

Scanservejs is the final solution for all platforms.

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Alfredolin 2 points 2 months ago

This. The goal is to have guests and family able to scan from whatever device, not from my huge linux gaming rig 😂. This one works already. And as said, point is covered, now I need the same for printing.

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vegetaaaaaaa 0 points 2 months ago

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Schlemmy 3 points 2 months ago

I've put my printer on the guest network.

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Shimitar 3 points 2 months ago

No cups does not print from web UI, it's only for management. Cups is used to install a d manage the printer, all your computers can then print over the network using cups, but they still need to configure the (remote cups) printer locally.

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Shimitar 3 points 2 months ago

I use scanservejs since at least one year and can confirm it's the best.

As for printing, I went down the same rabbit hole and had zero luck. Seems such a stupid thing yet nobody created such a service, except for a couple of commercial ones.

So yeah, if you find something ...

By the way, probably creating a simple web interface that accepts uploads and pipe to lpr is pretty easy to do, but I didn't got around to do it. Printing feels.... Outdated. And printing from computer or android is so easy anyway that probably useless.

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