Post

Raspberry Pi Print Server

Posted
By Ben Scarletti
6 min read

Overview

The aim is for a service called CUPS on the Pi to “abstract” the printer

For this project I used a Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB of RAM and 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS Lite. This means that the system is “headless”, meaning it has no desktop or GUI, and runs entirely via command-line interface (CLI)

Some system information can be seen in the code block below

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ hostnamectl
 Static hostname: mypi
       Icon name: computer
      Machine ID: ...
         Boot ID: ...
Operating System: Raspbian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
          Kernel: Linux 6.12.47+rpt-rpi-v8
    Architecture: arm64

The easiest way to interact with the Pi is via Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) on a separate machine on the same network. In this case I am using PowerShell on Windows 11 and SSH into the Pi via ssh guesshuu@mypi.local

The printer is the Samsung Xpress M2070, it is not wireless and does not use the modern IPP (Internet Printing Protocol). It is connected to the Pi via a USB cable.

To get a list of all the USB devices attached to your Pi:

  • lsusb -> for basic information
  • lsusb -v -> for more detailed information
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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04e8:3469 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd M2070 Series
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

I read some documentation and looked through forums for information on setting up a printer. The unanimous suggestion was to install CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) which is the open source printing system for Linux.

To install CUPS:

  • sudo apt install cups

To check if CUPS is running, use the built-in systemctl:

  • systemctl status cups

Commands added by CUPS:

  • lpadmin -> add, remove or configure printers
  • lpinfo -> list available printers and drivers
  • lpoptions -> change printer options

Before you can use the commands for CUPS you want to register the current user:

  • sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin guesshuu -> uses the usermod built-in to add user to lpadmin group

The before and after registration can be seen in the code block below

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpinfo -v
lpinfo: Forbidden
guesshuu@mypi:~ $ sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin guesshuu
guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpinfo -v
file cups-brf:/
network beh
network ipp
network socket
network https
network lpd
network http
network ipps
direct usb://Samsung/M2070%20Series?serial=ZF44B8KFBD009SN&interface=1

To add a printer you want to use the correct driver, but this is often easier said than done as there don’t seem to be any Samsung drivers when you try lpinfo -m | grep -i samsung, and it may not be easy to find one for ARM architecture. You can see that HP drivers do exist on the system in the code block below

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpinfo -m | grep -i samsung
guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpinfo -m | grep -i hp
lsb/usr/cupsfilters/HP-Color_LaserJet_CM3530_MFP-PDF.ppd HP Color LaserJet CM3530 MFP PDF
lsb/usr/cupsfilters/pxlcolor.ppd HP Color LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS
drv:///cupsfilters.drv/dsgnjt600pcl.ppd HP DesignJet 600 pcl, 1.0
...

To send a print job to a printer you either need a specific driver, a generic driver, or to send it raw. Listed in order of how effective the method is likely to be. Here it was easier to just use a generic driver drv:///sample.drv/laserjet.ppd as seen in the install command:

  • sudo lpadmin -p samsung -E -v "usb://Samsung/M2070%20Series?serial=ZF44B8KFBD009SN&interface=1" -m drv:///sample.drv/laserjet.ppd

You can check if the printer was installed correctly with lpstat

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpstat -p
printer samsung is idle.  enabled since Tue 30 Dec 2025 16:42:48 GMT
guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lpstat -l -p samsung
printer samsung is idle.  enabled since Tue 30 Dec 2025 16:42:48 GMT
        Form mounted:
        Content types: any
        Printer types: unknown
        Description: samsung
        Alerts: none
        Location:
        Connection: direct
        Interface: /etc/cups/ppd/samsung.ppd
        On fault: no alert
        After fault: continue
        Users allowed:
                (all)
        Forms allowed:
                (none)
        Banner required
        Charset sets:
                (none)
        Default pitch:
        Default page size:
        Default port settings:

Many tutorials suggested some variant of the code block below. Where everywhere means driverless or using the IPP Everywhere driver, the modern standard. But this requires a wireless, or networked, printer to start with.

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sudo lpadmin \
  -p samsung \
  -E \
  -v usb://Samsung/M2070%20Series?serial=ZF44B8KFBD009SN&interface=1 \
  -m everywhere

To remove a printer:

  • sudo lpadmin -x samsung

To print a test page:

  • lp -d samsung /usr/share/cups/data/testprint
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    guesshuu@mypi:~ $ lp -d samsung /usr/share/cups/data/testprint
request id is samsung-4 (1 file(s))

Other commands:

  • lpstat -W completed -o -> Shows completed jobs
  • lpstat -W not-completed -o -> Shows pending or failed jobs

Wireless Print Server

There is a simple tutorial for making the print server via CUPS which can be found here

To allow any device on the network to access CUPS printers, and submit print jobs:

  • sudo cupsctl --remote-any

To check if it worked you can use cupsctl | grep remote

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ cupsctl | grep remote
_remote_admin=0
_remote_any=1

With _remote_admin=0, remote users cannot log in via the web interface or modify printer settings

CUPS Web Interface

To connect to the print server’s web interface ensure the print server is setup, as seen here. Then find the IP address using ifconfig. An abridged version of the output can be seen in the code block below. Where we see an IP address of 192.168.0.57

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ ifconfig

...

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.0.57  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.0.255

Check that the print server is running and that CUPS is listening on port 631

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guesshuu@mypi:~ $ ss -ltnp | grep 631
LISTEN 0      4096       127.0.0.1:631       0.0.0.0:*
LISTEN 0      4096           [::1]:631          [::]:*

In your browser, navigate to https://192.168.0.57:631 or https://192.168.0.57:631/admin, which will ask you to sign in. Ignore HTTPS certificate warnings from your browser. This is the CUPS Web Interface, and is essentially a browser-based GUI for interacting with CUPS

An example screenshot of the interface can be seen here

Connecting from Another Device

Tutorials suggest there are more complicated steps, but once sudo cupsctl --remote-any was run it just showed up for all devices as a printer on the network. On Windows 11 it looks like this

Miscellaneous

  • Once CUPS is installed, the print server should load on startup
  • Currently it is set up that the computing to make a file “printer-ready” is done by the Pi. You can configure it via sudo nano /etc/cups/cupsd.conf so that the device sending does the work, eg. Windows 11 or your phone
    • When the Pi is in charge of rasterisation it can be quite slow to print
  • It was not needed in this case but many tutorials suggest you need to install Samba for a print server
miscellaneous
raspberry pi print server raspbian linux cli
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.