yaymukund’s weblog

February 3, 2019

Wireless printers on swaywm

Here’s how you add a wireless printer to Sway. You’ll need the following tools:

  1. CUPS, the “standards-based, open source printing system”
  2. Avahi for wireless support
  3. nss-mdns, so we can refer to the printer as <hostname>.local (e.g. myprinter.local)
# Install the packages
$ yay -S cups avahi nss-mdns

# Start the cups service
$ systemctl start org.cups.cupsd.service

# Ensure you can see the CUPS web interface at localhost:631

# Start the Avahi daemon
$ systemctl start avahi-daemon.service

Now, enable hostname resolution in Avahi by following the instructions on the Arch Wiki.

# Find the printer on the local network
$ sudo lpinfo --include-schemes dnssd -v

# You should see something like:
# network dnssd://Canon%20MG5700%20series._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=<some uuid>

# Add the printer to CUPS
$ sudo lpadmin \
  -p short-name-eg-canon-md5750 \
  -D "Full Name (e.g. 'Canon MG5750 Laserjet')" \
  -L "Location (e.g. 'Living Room') (Optional)" \
  -v dnssd://Canon%20MG5700...

If you did everything right so far, you should be able to see the printer in the CUPS web interface (localhost:631). If you click on the printer’s name, it should say “Idle, Accepting Jobs.”

Now, you can try to print your document. You can track your print job from the CUPS web interface. If something goes wrong, you can see the error there.

Bonus! Add custom printer drivers

To access advanced features of your printer, you may need to install a custom driver. First, find the relevant drivers by searching the AUR for your printer model. For me, it was the cnijfilter2-mg7700 package.

Once you’ve done that, tell CUPS to assign the custom driver to the printer:

# Find the driver's ppd file
$ lpinfo -m
# It will be something like lsb/usr/canonmg5700.ppd

# And assign it in CUPS
$ sudo lpadmin -p canon-md5750 -m lsb/usr/canonmg5700.ppd

That’s it!

Troubleshooting

My printer in CUPS is listed as disabled or not accepting new jobs

Make sure you run:

$ sudo cupsenable $short_name
$ sudo cupsaccept $short_name

You may be able to do this from the web interface, but I was getting permission denied errors.

My print job fails because it can’t find ghostscript

You need to install ghostscript. In Arch, it’s just yay -S ghostscript.

References