I'm going to finish my basement, what's that got to do with computers? Usually nothing, but in my case, the computer with the printer connected is in the basement. So my choices was to bring a computer to the first floor to act as a print server, or get a small print server and save some electricity by not having to keep the computer turned on.

I went with the print server. I found a refurbished NetGear PS110. Below is what I needed to do to get it working.

First, I have Ubuntu on my laptop, and an old computer with Win98 and soon it will have Edubuntu on it. I figured I would plug in the print server and it would get the IP via DHCP. It didn't. I found that the CONFIG file has a line for DHCP and it's Disabled. Apparently it's done at the factory.

Since it didn't get an IP address, I decided to have the software for the print server set it up. I brought up the Win98 computer and installed the software. I launched the Wizard, and while it saw the print server, it would not configure it. I refreshed the screen to ensure that the computer now saw the print server and launched the IP config utility. I typed in all the details and it updated them. I then installed the printer on the Win98 machine using the install printer utility. Worked like a charm. I found out later that I would have been able to configure the IP by doing a

arp -s -v 192.168.1.150 macaddress

Then it was time to conquer the laptop. I brought up the CUPS web page located at:

http://localhost:631/printers

Over to the Administration tab.

add
lpd/lpr host or printer
device uri = lpd://192.168.1.150/P1
model driver hp, I used 'HP LaserJet 6L ' for my printer

When I hit add, it asked me for a username and password. None of the passwords I knew would work. I eventually had to create a password for the root user. I put in the password and it installed. I then had to remove the password.

Create the password with:

sudo passwd root

Remove the password with:

sudo passwd -l root

Everything working fine now. As I said before, I do this Blog for my own use in case I have to rebuild the computer.