I got a new printer. Auto-discovered, added, and prints fine from Windows in 2 minutes. Auto discovered, added, and prints fine from OSX in 30 seconds. Auto-discovered and added on Linux, but trying to print results in “printer is unreachable at this time” - even after 50 re-installs, different configs, different drivers, different protocols.
I recognized that some computers were on different subnets, but couldn’t figure out a pattern. It turns out that the printer has a setting called “Restricted Server List” and the default setting is null. Here’s its description in the admin interface: “Comma-delimited list of IP addresses that are allowed to make TCP connections. Example: 157.184.0.0/24. where 0 is a wildcard and /24 is the network prefix.”
It also has a setting called “Restricted Server List Options”, set to block all ports by default. Here’s its description: "By default, addresses not in the restricted server list will have all access blocked. When Block Printing Only is selected, addresses not in the restricted sever list will be blocked from printing only. When Block Printing and HTTP Only is selected, addresses not in the restricted server list will be blocked from printing and HTTP. "
Admin interface doesn’t say this anywhere, but the default setting of no restricted servers apparently allows access from other networks, but not from the same network as the printer. I set the restricted servers to “192.168.132.0/24” and then I could access the printer admin web page and print to the printer from my Linux box, but not from any of the computers that were working before. So I set it to “192.168.0.0/16” and every computer on all subnets in my house can print and access the printer admin.
The default setting of no restricted servers was extremely non-intuitive in that it actually only restricted servers on the same subnet. And there was no such documentation.
What a crappy waste of 7 frickin’ hours!
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but this was 100% caused by printer settings conflicting your LAN topology and has nothing to do with Win/Mac vs Linux, right?
Yes
Fuck printers.
“Paper jam detected in tray 1”
That’s probably too clear of a message for a printer.
“PC LOAD LETTER”
I feel you. I spent an hour yesterday trying to figure out why half of my prints from my phone were cut off along the top edge of the page.
Turns out my phone defaults to A4 when printing and there’s no way to set the default to US Letter so I have to do that for every single print.
Oh god, I used to work IT for a company that had a European office so users getting documents set to A4 was not unusual. The problem came when they tried to print one of those documents and the office printer would sit and complain that it didn’t have any A4 available and wouldn’t print anything in the queue until that was fixed. And of course users had no idea there was any difference between letter size and A4.
Coincidentally, i constantly get documents randomly default to the US letter, which I don’t even know what it means. I only ever seen A4 in my life. Annoying as hell.
Have you considered that you’re a victim of a default country syndrome?
Every bloody single thing with printers is wrong, shitty, filthy, disgusting, assumptive, braindead, idiotic, and it makes me wonder if the printer industry only recruits people who are outsmarted by a pile of green potatoes.
So… OP, if it’s any consolation, I know that feel. It is infuriating.
Sir, this is Wendy’s
On linux: I take a printer, plug it in, it gets autodiscovered and prints. On windows: I spend forever doing random shenanigans to get it working.
Same goes for hardware upgrades, bluetooth headphones, etc etc.
I dunno what you’re doing wrong. Maybe the distro? Any flavor of Ubuntu should work with most supported peripherals at zero effort. If it doesn’t, it means the device manufacturer never bothered with a driver for linux and you’re completely out of luck.
The absolute most problem I have with printers and Windows is setting the adapter and printer settings.
Double so if I need it to configure uniformly across multiple systems.Can’t say I share your issue.
Now don’t get me started about configuring a printer on a mac. Holy fuck is annoying to print stuff if you are not used to iOS/MacOS
With gratis Linux we pay with our time. You did very good to go through all this hell in a mere 7 hours. Programmer creating those monstrosities don’t understand our mundane concerns.
P.S. : still Linux has qualities that makes it superior in many ways.
The problem as described has nothing to do with Linux.
It was a default printer setting that blocked access from all computers in the same network.All of these replies made me feel a little bit better, but yours especially resonated with me. Thanks.
Great post ! i felt my past Linux experiences where quite normal while reading it. So, thanks to you.
Honestly, this is a pretty good example of why this isn’t an inherent Linux problem. It’s a problem of using any OS that isn’t popular enough to be supported by manufacturers. More people using Linux would cause problems like this to stop happening.
I realize that’s a distinction without a difference to a lot of people, and that’s totally okay. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it matters to me that the benefits of Linux are specific to the OS, while most of the problems are not.
None of this has anything to do with the operating system of the devices trying to use the printer.
Huh, yeah, you’re right. I missed that the first time, but it’s how the computers are networked, not the OS.
More people using Linux would cause problems like this to stop happening.
i say the designers + programmers made it so and you say users made it so. … it seems we disagree here.
No. That’s not what I said. I said the manufacturers not testing their equipment on Linux made it so, and more users would change that. Actually, looking at it again that isn’t even true. This example has nothing to do with the operating system at all. It’s caused by connecting with a computer on a different subnet (or I guess more accurately the same subnet as the printer), which would have happened even if the OS were Windows.
