airprint-generate.py
This script will generate avahi .service files for shared CUPS printers.
This script will connect to a CUPS server and for each printer configured and
marked as shared will generate a .service file for avahi that is compatible
with Apple's AirPrint announcements. Any printer that can be configured to work
with CUPS can be used. Printers should not be configured in CUPS as raw, unless
the printer can natively print PDF. That is to say, CUPS needs to already be
configured with a PDF filter. Debian based distributions ship CUPS pre-configured
this way.
DNSSD has a limit of 255 Chars for a given txt-record, because of this the list
of accepted pdl's will be truncated to fit. If you're curious to see which ones
are trimmed out of the list run with the script with the verbose flag (--verbose)
If python-lxml is installed, .service files will be generated in a human
readble format, I wasn't able to get minidom's version to work acceptably.
The git repository also contains airprint.convs, airprint.types and apple.types. These need
to be copied to the /usr/share/cups/mime folder.
Copy the .service files generated by this script to /etc/avahi/services.
Then restart both avahi and cups with
sudo service avahi-daemon restart
sudo service cups restart
Usage: airprint-generate.py [options]
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-H HOSTNAME, --host=HOSTNAME
Hostname of CUPS server (optional)
-P PORT, --port=PORT Port number of CUPS server
-u USER, --user=USER Username to authenticate with against CUPS
-d DIRECTORY, --directory=DIRECTORY
Directory to create service files
-v, --verbose Print debugging information to STDERR
-p PREFIX, --prefix=PREFIX
Prefix all files with this string