Host printers missing

Host Win2k
guest: Ubuntu 6.10

Devices-USB shows all usb devices including the printers.

None of the USB printers show when I try to print within Ubuntu via parallels

I would like to see the usb printers in the list of printers when I go to file- print. Is there a way of making this happen?

Robin

 

Please can I have a reply because without my USB printers and scanner working that is not much point in having parallels working.

Robin

 

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You're out of luck.

The mac community, well they are almost completely lucky, but Workstation users, are out of luck.
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I'd hate to interject with a solution that's really ugly: you could try the shared printers method.

You would need to install samba, cups, & cups-bsd in your ubuntu vm and configure ubuntu to search your windows host machine in linneighborhood or nautilus.

Next you configure your printers thru the browser in ubuntu, i.e.: //localhost:631 and use the lpd://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/lpt1 protocol to connect/attach your windows printer into your linux vm.

The method also works with linux host/windows vm as well. Scanners are much harder to configure; I just configure the scanner on the host only and have it post its output to the shared folders between the host and guest.

Titetanium

 

Titetanium

Can you point me to a more detailed and elementary explanation of the steps I take for the shared printer method? In particular I need some more help on the the configuration through the browser for example how do I find the lpd address and are all the printers hung off localhost:631. I am also not clear how I print to a printer that is shared. Will it appear in my list of printers for linux and will it reappear automatically after I have rebooted?

Currently // is picking up the printers on the USB ports so is there no other way to turn those USB connections directly into useable printers?

I would prefer to have Linux as the host. Is it possible to install the printers and scanner in the Windows VM so that I could print from the VM machine? If that is a possibility then I could set up my printers and scanner from within Windows and use your shared method when I need to access the printers from within Ubuntu.

 

Robbyn,

I am currently running Debian testing (host) with WXPSP2 (guest vm) in parallels. I use a usb laser printer both at the office and at home. You need at a minimum in your linux host or vm: samba, cups, cups-bsd, cups-client and all the dependencies they require.

After installing those packages, open your browser (firefox or konqueror will do), and type http://localhost:631 in the address box and press enter. This takes you to the cups configuration page where you configure your printer(s). Set up your printers with one notation:
a) if your host is linux, use the usb://printer filter protocol and driver for your printer.
b) if your host is windows and your guest is linux: use the lpd://host ip address/printer filter/queue ---> where host ip address is the ip address of your host machine, printer filter is the printer driver of your printer, and queue is the queue name of the spooler, i.e. it normally is lpt1.
c) if your guest is windows: configure your printer as a network printer pointing to the ip address of the host machine. Use the correct or closest windows driver for the printer.

This would give you the ability to print in your guest vm as a network printer but it works very well even though you can't use the usb port directly as the mac version of parallels allows them to.

That said, this gives you printing but not scanning support in your guest vm. I haven't gotten usb scanning to work reliably in the guest vm yet, so for the time being I do have it working in the linux host machine. I configured the scanner to scan all of its outputs to the shared folder between the host and guest vm(s). This works fine for me, as I do not want to depend on the guest vm to do my scanning anyway. That said, I do understand you might not have the ability to scan in linux, your scanner might not be supported, so you would rather scan from windows if you can. There was a utility I found that is supposed to allow you to use the scanner in your guest vm, but it didn't work the way I thought it would from the testing I did with it. If you want to try that method, go here.

 

titetanium

I am sure many will appreciate your reply. Thank you.

As you have guessed I am having trouble finding linux drivers for my printers. I do not like windows being the host. So I would like to reverse engineer the printer set up so that the Linux host prints through the Windows VM not the other way arround. Is that possible?

Robin

 

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Absolutely.
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Constant,

Pray tell us how that is possible when we are using linux as the host and windows as the vm. As Robbyn pointed out, linux drivers for many exotic printers and/or scanners are hard to come by. You know as well as I do that the windows/linux version of parallels doesn't have full usb support for printers/scanners and the like. If it is possible, then full usb support would have been a given and Robbyn wouldn't even be asking this question in the first place.

Robbyn,

You can certainly attempt what you're asking, but I can't/won't guarantee that it would work reliably as I am not a programmer for parallels. The hitch is USB support, if it was easy to get working, I'd be backing up my blackberry/surfing the net using the blackberry modem in my windows vm and ditching windows as a dual boot option for good. I could care less that we're not getting coherence, and all the other goodies that the mac users are enjoying, if I could have full USB 2.0 support in the current version of parallels.

 

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tite tanium / rob byn,

There are very few printers now that don't have a Linux printer driver available for them. However, that means not all, so I should not have said absolutely. I should have said very likely. Sorry for any confussion caused.

Given that a driver can be found, just install Samba server in Linux, and share the printer. It will be available in windwoes as a network printer. This has been a most effective work around for the lack of full usb pass through support.
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