Bonjour printing problem: Solved

[crash_af]

I learned something new this week and thought I'd share the experience for others who have had this problem.

I was trying to set up a network printer for my office using an iMac connected to the printer, setting it for sharing, and letting the other computers print through Bonjour. The problem was I kept getting an "unable to get printer status(forbidden)" error like this ticket. After scratching my head for a while and trying all of the different things I found on the web, I finally went into the CUPS system (http://127.0.0.1:631 on any OSX Mac) and looked at the server configuration file. It was set by default to deny all. (I don't remember the specific line in the file, I'm not at the office but I will update with the exact string I changed next time I'm in)

When I changed deny to allow, the printer started spitting out all the pending test jobs that I had queued up on the other computers in the office.

Hope this helps save someone else from banging their head against the wall trying to figure out the same problem.

Again, the symptoms were, the system directly connected to the printer would print fine, but all other systems in the office would reject the job with the forbidden error. They could see the printer, but not talk to it.

Later,
Joe

 

[crash_af]

As promised, here is the actual lines of the CUPS server configuration file that I changed.
<Location />
Allow From All
Allow From 127.0.0.1
# Allow shared printing and remote administration...
Order allow,deny
Allow @LOCAL
</Location>

The second line 'Allow From All' used to say 'Deny From All' and when I changed it and saved the configuration, it solved my problem.

Hope this helps.

Later,
Joe

 

[Rforr]

Many thanks, I'd love to find out how this gets changed.