Setting Up and Administering Printers by Using the CUPS Web Browser Interface

When you access the CUPS web browser interface at http://localhost:631, you are taken to the Home tab. From this tab, you can access all of the print administration tasks, which are group together by category, as well as the full set of CUPS documentation.

Besides the Home tab, the following tabs are also displayed on the web browser interface's main web page:

• Administration – Enables you to access most print administration tasks, including CUPS server configuration

  You can directly access the Administration section of the web browser interface by going to http://localhost:631/admin.

• Classes – Enables you to search print classes

  CUPS provides collections of printers. These collections are called printer classes. Print jobs that are sent to a class are forwarded to the first available printer in that class. Classes can be members of other classes. Therefore, you can define very large, distributed printer classes for high-availability printing.

• Documentation – Enables you to access the CUPS documentation, which includes manuals, system administration documentation, FAQs, and online help

• Jobs – Enables you to view and manage print jobs for configured printers.

• Printers – Enables you to view information about and modify the settings of a specified printer

More About the Administration Tab

Most printing tasks can be performed from the Administration tab. Note that some tasks can be performed from multiple tabs. Basic server settings can also be changed from the Administration tab. For more information about CUPS server configuration, see the cupsd.conf(5) man page.

The following figure shows the contents of the Administration tab of the CUPS web browser interface.

The following table describes the task categories and individual tasks that can be performed from the Administration tab.

More About the Printers Tab

The Printers tab enables you to view and modify information for configured print queues, as illustrated in the following figure.

From the Printers tab, you can also perform the following tasks:

• Print a test page

• Stop the printer

• Reject a print job

• Move a print job

• Cancel all print jobs

• Unpublish the printer

• Modify a printer

• Set printer options

• Delete a printer

• Set the printer as the default

• Set allowed users for a printer

How to Add a New Printer by Using the CUPS Web Browser Interface

1. Access the CUPS web browser interface by going to http://localost:631.
2. Click the Administration tab.
   • You can directly access the Administration tab by going to http://localhost:631/admin.
3. Click the Add Printer button and then follow the prompts.
4. If prompted, type your login user name and password, or the root user name and password.

Next Steps

After the new printer has been added, you are prompted to set the default printer options (paper size, output mode, and so on) for the printer. Make any necessary changes to the printer configuration, then click the Set Default Options button to save your changes.

Some printers also support autoconfiguration. To update these options automatically, click the Query Printer for Default Options button.

After you have added the new printer, you can print to it from any application. To print a test page, select Print Test Page from the Maintenance menu.