Wednesday 22 July 2015

Setting up ClearOS as a Google Cloud Print server

I have ClearOs 6 running 24/7 as my main Internet-facing router, providing firewalling and routing for my LAN.

I also have a number of Android devices, and it has always annoyed me that Google Cloud Printing seemed to require a Windows PC switched on.

Some Googling revealed that a Linux CUPS server can be made to share its printers with Google Cloud Print. so I decided to try to set this up.

First, I installed the Advanced Print Server into ClearOs, from its Marketplace (it's free).

Then I set up my printer by following the instructions.

Then I logged on to the server as root, using putty.

I downloaded cloudprint from https://github.com/armooo/cloudprint, and unzipped it to /usr/share/cloudprint.

I installed the packages it needs (mostly worked out by trial and error)

yum install python python-pip gcc python-devel cups-devel

pip install pycups argparse cloudprint[daemon]

pip install --upgrade cloudprint[daemon]

cloudprint

(The square brackets are typed in as shown - they aren't code for an optional argument.)

This gave me a url to put into a web browser to add the printer to my Google Cloud.

In order to have this run automatically, in daemon mode, at startup, I added

cloudprint -d

to /etc/rc.d/rc.local 

That was pretty much it (aside from all the messing about finding out what was needed). Note that I did not do everything in one go, the way I have documented it, just installed each bit I needed when I found out what I had didn't work.

Hope this helps anyone else wanting to do it

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for posting this article. It's just about the only one that I have found on the net to integrate Google CloudPrint with a ClearOS system. I followed your instructions and have gotten to the command cloudprint and then it gives me some errors. I do not know anything about python but I am comfortable at the command line. Here is the error message as well as some system information. http://pastebin.com/Bc1kNTgh

If you would be able to help me, it would be very much appreciated as this server is at my church and it would allow the entire ministry leader team of 50+ people to print from anywhere and not just at the church facility.

Regards,
Brent

www.coastcommunitychurch.net

Nikki Locke said...

I just had the same error. I fixed it by running:

pip install --upgrade cloudprint[daemon]