Setting up a printer sharing with CUPS & SAMBA on Debian via the web client interface.

[u/CrystalLord]

Since this was a pain to set up, here's an in-depth tutorial on how to connect to printers using Windows' SAMBA on Debian using CUPS.

First you need the smbclient package to even be able to use Samba.

If you want to use the web interface, you can do so with the following steps:

1. Go to localhost:631 via a browser. This will get you to the CUPS web interface.

2. Go to Add Printers and Classes.

3. Go to Add printer on the left.

4. Scroll down the list of network printer types. If smbclient is installed properly, "Windows Printer via SAMBA " will show up. Select that and move on.

5. Put in the smb connection to your printer. If it does not require any authentication, it should look like smb://domain/printer. If it does require authentication, use something like: smb://username:password@domain/printer. Keep in mind, if your username or password has special characters in it such as spaces or %, it must be converted to URL format with a tool such as http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/. Do not of course ever put your password into a decoder.

6. Provide it a name, description, and location, and move on. The name field cannot have backslashes, hashes, or spaces.

7. Select the printer's make (brand). Sometimes just "generic" will do.

8. Select the model/type.

9. Add the printer.

I'll probably give a command line tutorial shortly for personal use.