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By looking at a cool project and remembering that I have occasional problems connecting my old Cannon LBP1120 printer with Ubuntu, I thought if Raspberry is capable to work as print server.

(As a Print server I mean that it is possible to print from other computer without installing necessarily driver.)

I have sketched two solutions with QEMU:

  • Installing Windows 2000, LBP1120 driver and providing from there network interface
  • Installing Lubuntu 12.04 and configuring the LBP1120 printer from there

The questions are:

  • Can QEMU give USB interface for guest?
  • Is Raspberry Pi performance suitable for the task?
techraf
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Jānis Erdmanis
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2 Answers2

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Can qemu give USB interface for guest?

Yes, QEMU can pass USB devices to a guest. See this document.

Is raspberry pi performance suitable for the task?

No, the Rasperry Pi has a very limited processor. Instead of virtualizing another Linux guest, consider directly installing CUPS.

Lekensteyn
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If you don't mind paying $10 for it, I would suggest to get Exagear for RPi, and then either install WINE and try out Win2000 driver, or configure your printer directly in x86 Debian guest system, without WINE.

The project you refer to is indeed cool, but considering 12 minutes boot time for WinXP, I'd expect printing to be quite slow as well (if you ever get it working).

PS. Another option (which probably won't work for your printer though) is to run

sudo apt-get install printer-driver-gutenprint

and hope that your printer is supported.

Dmitry Grigoryev
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