Mac Mode

For awhile I’ve been wanting to setup printing on the Mac using the printer attached to one of our Windows machines and shared over the network. I had no idea how to do this on a Mac, so first I explored around the preferences menu looking for printer options. Looked like I already had a printer configured from some time in the past but it didn’t work so off to Google I roamed.

The following how-to post proved to be very helpful and blockquoted are passages from those instructions below, which boiled down to the following steps:

Windows
1. make sure Windows XP is setup to have printer shared.
2. determine the IP address of the Windows machine connected to the shared printer by using shell.

START -> Run -> Type: cmd
type:

Probably will be something like 192.168.101.xxx where xxx is the number of the machine.

3. Add OSX port to Windows machine:

Start > Control Panel > My Network Places > Network Connections. New task on the left: Change Windows Firewall Settings, then click on the Exceptions tab. Click on Add Port, enter “OS X printer” (or whatever you want) in Name and “515″ in Port Number. Leave TCP selected, click OK,

4. Make sure Windows Print services for Unix are installed:

Click Start and then Control Panel. Double click on Add or Remove Programs. Click on Add/Remove Windows Components. Double click Other Network File and Print Services. Select Print Services for Unix.

Mac OS X
1. Start terminal and type:

cd /usr/libexec/cups/backend/

2. Create symbolic link for CUPS by typing:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/smbspool smb

If you get an “already exists” message, don’t worry about it, continue.

3. In your browser navigate to CUPS web interface at:

http://127.0.0.1:631

4. Select “Manage printers” and then “Add Printer.” Give your printers any name, location, and description. The description field will be displayed in your Mac field.

5. Under the device option choose:

LPD/LPR Host or Printer

6. In the device URI option type:

lpd://windows.ip.address/WINDOWS_SHARED_NAME

where WINDOWS_SHARED_NAME is the shared name of the Windows printer.

7. Burn a test print. I printed the teminal bash screen. Voila!