Bonjour Printing via Airport Extreme

I installed the Bonjour application. It didn't seem to work at first. Then yesterday I decided to see what printers might come up if I selected print from the firefox 2 menu.
My wife's network printer was available so I setup my mac and plugged the printer directly into its usb port. Printer was found and it printed a test page OK. So then I plugged the printer into my apple airport extreme and was able to print to the bonjour printer via airport extreme.

Finally I'm getting somewhere!

 

Hello,

that's interesting. Are you talking about Linpus Linux? I also have a netwrok printer in a Mac ecosystem, it's attached to a TIme Capsule. With Linpus Linux, I wasn't able to use it, while Ubuntu connected to it at once. I know what Bonjour is for Macs, but what's the "Bonjour application" you're writing about? I guess it must be some utilitiy to install on Linpus Linux. Where can one find it?

 

I believe that I found the bonjour application by going into settings, right click to access the advanced menu then settings and add/remove programs and searching for samba (pc smb file/printer sharing). I encountered an application called bonjour. However, before you install it let me say this about the linpus lite bonjour software....

It is unstable, not that it crashes, it just cannot reliably find the printers. Today, for instance, I have my ibook hooked up to the printer via usb so that I could try to scan a page into a pdf format. So, I ran a quick test print to the usb printer on my ibook. Then, I disconnected the printer and hooked it up to my airport extreme so that I could connect via bonjour. After a half hour, the linpus lite bonjour application kept saying that the valid mfc201c printer was still on usb and it tried to print to it but then displayed an error message that the printer had disconnected... several times.

I tried printing from the ibook via bonjour, thinking that perhaps the data traffic might alert the linpus lite application into finding the current location of the printer. Although linpus lite did realize there was a problem printing to a missing usb printer, it still did not allow printing via bonjour, saying the printer was still disconnected. I would go into the word processor and it would list both the usb and bonjour mfc210c (and my wife's printer connect via usb to her imac) except that when I went to print to the printer, it would not allow the print button to be used. So I plugged the printer back into the ibook usb port, yes it found it and printed a test page... then reconnected the printer back to the airport extreme and it still would not allow me to press the print button to print wirelessly to it.

Then, I ran the pdf reader application and tried to print the acer aspire one pdf file from there. It finally let me print a test page (selected page 1-1) to the printer. Thereafter it seemed to know the valid printer was available via bonjour, however, I still had to fight to get linpus lite to recognize the bonjour printer after having successfully printed to it prior to this disconnect issue. I got several messages in the word processing application saying the printer was not connected. So obviously there is some problem with the linpus lite application determining when a printer is available. It does seem to find the printer more often when connect to the ibook via usb cable.

I will go search... right click to access the advanced menu (if you have done the patch to linpus lite). Click on system, then add/remove software. Search for bonjour... The following applications are installed on my machine....

avahi - 0.6.21-6.fc8.i386 Local network service discovery
libpurple -2:2.3.1-2008062601.i386 libpurple library for im clients like Pidgin and Finch
avahi-compat-libdns_sd - 0.6.21-6.fc8.i386 Libraries for Apple Bonjour mDNSResponder compatibility.

I also have installed samba. Whether this is required or not??? It is used to access windows smb file/printer sharing because I was trying to use that to access the printer prior to installing Bonjour.

The following samba applications are installed (including the default mplayer)

samba - 3.0.26a-6.fc8.i386 The Samba Suite of Programs
libsmbclient - 3.0.26a-6.fc8.i386 The SMB client library
samba-common - 3.0.26a-6.fc8.i386 Files used by both Samba servers and clients
samba-client - 3.0.26a-6.fc8.i386 Samba client programs

You can easily check to see what is installed. When you get to the add/remove programs and click on it, select the search tab and then click the button beside installed packages and type samba or bonjour to see what is installed. You can then click on another button: Available packages to find what you need to install. It took a while to realize that bonjour did not seem to be working. Then we had company and they printed to my wife's imac and the printer connected via usb. Seeing that it could find her printer and print to it, I decided to hook up my ibook via usb and then the printer to the airport extreme and the rest is history...

Good luck. I hope it works for you. Just expect that linpus lite's bonjour client will not always recognize the status of a bonjour printer. It seems that everytime I go back to print to the bonjour printer... that it takes a while to figure out that the printer is accessible so I have to connect/disconnect the printer to my mac and airport extreme. Oh... make sure that on your mac that you have security set to share files/printers or you will run into trouble there. :?

I have not installed the Brother printer drivers or tcsh (shell program required for the Brother printer drivers).

During the process of installing the Brother printer software onto my Leopard OS ibook, I had issues with the control center greying out the finder menu items. Found an update for leopard and installed it so I could scan three pages into a pdf file on the ibook. It still screws up finder menu items so finder will probably have to be force quitted and restarted. I was able to use my scanner on my mfc210C by installing the mfc suite software... whatever its called. I just don't like installing the pagemaker software because it won't work unless you have administrator privileges. At least now I can scan pages into my leopard os on the ibook when needed. The brother software patch fixes the control center issues somewhat... not a perfect working solution as there are still finder issues using the control center. :geek: