This document describes three techniques for printing to the Find-Me-Students queue, which supports dynamic releasing of print jobs using your ID badge. The first two methods will work in many distributions, while the 3rd method gives step-by-step instructions for Ubuntu Linux.
Options for most Linux distributions
- It is possible to login to a website and upload your document to print using the instructions found in this post: Printing from Web Browsers.
- It is also possible to use Google Cloud Print if you have Google’s Chrome web browser installed. First, you have to associate your personal Google account with your Andrew ID. Instructions to do this can be found in this post about Printing from Android. After you have done so, login into the Chrome browser in Linux using the Google ID which you just associated. Choose to print a page (Ctrl+P), and under Destination, click the Change… button. Under the section for Google Cloud Print, choose the Find-Me-Students printer. Click Print. After printing, your document will be held until you swipe your ID at a printer, or release it using the web interface.
Instructions for adding a printer in Ubuntu 14.04
Prerequisites
It is necessary to have the “smbclient” package installed in order to use a Samba (Windows) printer. Run this from the Terminal App:
sudo apt-get install smbclient
Enter your Ubuntu account password when prompted.
Add New Printer
Open System Settings, then click Printers, and click the Add button. Expand Network Printer, and highlight Windows Printer via SAMBA. You should see a window like the one pictured below:
For the printer URI, enter qtr-print-01.qatar.win.cmu.edu/Find-Me-Students to the right of smb://
For Authentication, leave the default choice of Prompt user if authentication is required.
Click the Verify… button, and for Domain enter QATAR, then enter username/password with your Andrew ID and password. If it is successful, you will see:
Click Forward, choose the default of Generic, and click Forward again. Next choose PostScript and click Forward again:
Enter a Printer Name and Description (these can be whatever you like), then click Apply.
Click Cancel for the test page. We have to change the printer settings first. Double-click the newly added printer, and you’ll see the Printer Properties. First highlight Policies, and uncheck the box for Shared.
Click Apply, then highlight Printer Options. For Page size, choose A4 ; for Double-sided printing, choose Long edge (standard).
Click Apply, then highlight Settings and click Print Test Page button. It should now show a dialog box asking for your username and password – enter your Andrew ID and password. Sometimes it does not show this dialog box – if so, then you have to go back to the printer, right-click and choose View Print Queue Ctrl+F. You’ll see a window like the following:
right-click on the job and choose Authenticate, then enter your Andrew ID and password. If you choose to “Save password” here, it will be placed into the System Keyring – this is safe (as long as your Ubuntu account has a password) because the Keyring file is encrypted.
Printing
You might notice that your Test Page hasn’t come out of any printer. This, and all future printouts will be held by Papercut until you swipe your ID at a printer, or release it using the web interface. If you chose not to save your password in the Keyring, you’ll have to open the Print Queue, then right-click on each print job and choose Authenticate, then enter your Andrew ID and password.
Security Note!
If, when adding the printer, you choose to “Set authentication details below” instead of “Prompt user if authentication is required”, and enter your username and password, then these end up in /etc/cups/printers.conf and /etc/cups/printers.conf.0 . Both of these files are plaintext, and even though they are owned by root and not readable without sudo rights, it still poses a security risk to your Andrew password. For this reason we recommend to choose Prompt instead, and if you want the convenience, choose to save password in Keyring.
There are several distributions of Linux which do not have a Keyring, and when adding Samba printers, they also end up storing your password in printers.conf, in the form of:
DeviceURI smb://username:password@printserver/printer
If you are running one of those distributions, we recommend using Web Print, or Google Cloud Print instead of CUPS/Samba.