Enabling CUPS on FreeBSD

The following steps can be used to enable CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) on FreeBSD.

• These steps seem to work on FreeBSD 5.2.1. They should work on other versions as well.
• The ports collection needs to be installed.
• These steps assume that root is using sh, ksh or bash; not csh or tcsh.

• CUPS Software Administrators Manual
• NewbieNet FreeBSD CUPS
• RFC 2069 HTTP Digest Access Authentication
• FreeBSD Diary CUPS - installation and configuration
• FreeBSD Handbook Groups

1. If X11 is not installed:

   1. Make sure that WITHOUT_X11=yes is in /etc/make.conf

   2. Install ghostscript-gnu-nox11 from /usr/ports/print/ghostscript-gnu-nox11:

      # cd /usr/ports/print/ghostscript-gnu-nox11
      # make install

2. Install CUPS from /usr/ports/print/cups:

   # cd /usr/ports/print/cups
   # make install

3. Enable cups:

   # cd /usr/local/etc/rc.d
   # ln -s cups.sh.sample cups.sh

4. (Optional) Enable digest authentication for /admin

   1. Change the following in /usr/local/etc/cups/cupsd.conf:

      AuthType Basic
      AuthClass System

      to

      AuthType Digest
      AuthClass Group
      AuthGroupName cupsadmin

      This should be around line 812.

   2. Create the cupsadmin group:

      # pw groupadd cupsadmin

   3. Create the cupsadmin user:

      # lppasswd -a -g cupsadmin cupsadmin

      lppasswd prompts for a password.

   NOTE:

   • Not all browsers support digest authentication. A text-mode browser that does is w3m (available in /usr/ports/www/w3m/).

   • lppasswd stores the user record in /usr/local/etc/cups/passwd.md5. The cupsadmin user is not a valid user on the system and the password for cupsadmin can only be used to authenticate accesses to /admin.

5. (Optional) Allow only local connections by changing the following in /usr/local/etc/cups/cupsd.conf:

   Port 631

   to

   Port 127.0.0.1:631

   This should be around line 408.

6. (Optional) Replace lp* commands with CUPS versions:

   1. Add CUPS_OVERWRITE_BASE=yes and NO_LPR=true to /etc/make.conf

   2. Link CUPS lp* commands in /usr/local/bin to /usr/bin:

      # cd /usr/bin 
      # for i in lp* ; do mv $i $i.default ; ln -s /usr/local/bin/$i $i ; done

   The alternative is to put /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin in PATH.

7. Start CUPS:

   # /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cups.sh start

8. (Optional) Check to see if CUPS is running:

   $ ps -auwxx | grep cupsd
   root    482  0.0  1.2  6924 6136  ??  Ss   11:11PM   0:00.22 /usr/local/sbin/cupsd

9. (Optional) Install the gimp-print printer drivers from /usr/ports/print/gimp-print:

   # cd /usr/ports/print/gimp-print
   # make install

10. Access the admin interface and configure CUPS via the the url http://localhost:631/