Printing without cups-browsed - TUXEDO Computers

Occasionaly we hear from our customers that there are problems with network printing on Ubuntu and its derivatives such as our TUXEDO OS. A printer that has just successfully completed a print job refuses the next one with the error message No suitable Destination Host found by cups-browsed. This or similarly worded messages appear when cups-browsed does not know a valid destination hostname or a valid destination IP for this queue at the time of the job, causing CUPS to abort the print job.

What is cups-browsed used for?

The service cups-browsed is a supporting daemon for the CUPS printing system (Common Unix Printing System). It scans the network for remote CUPS queues and IPP network printers and automatically creates local queues that point to these devices.

Errors in cups-browsed

If you receive the error message mentioned above, first check whether cups-browsed is active:

systemctl status cups-browsed

If cups-browsed is inactive or in a faulty state, restart the service with:

sudo systemctl restart cups-browsed

Afterwards, the printer should be rediscovered and the print queue should continue processing jobs. Depending on the exact error scenario, however, cups-browsed may terminate again after a few minutes.

Printing without cups-browsed

For some printers, cups-browsed causes more trouble than it is worth. Many printers no longer require cups-browsed at all, as CUPS itself can manage IPP queues. If failures occur frequently, you can remove cups-browsed from the system without losing functionality.

Before removing the service, first open the graphical CUPS administration interface at http://localhost:631. There, go to the Printers menu, click on the affected device, and note the printer name shown next to Description. Then look up the printer’s IP address in your router and note that as well. You will need this information if an older printer is no longer detected after removing cups-browsed.

Alternatively, you can determine the printer’s IP address via an ARP scan. To do so, install the tool with:

sudo apt install arp-scan

and find the IP using:

sudo arp-scan --localnet

Removing cups-browsed

If you want to remove cups-browsed, you can do so with the following command:

sudo apt purge cups-browsed && sudo systemctl restart cups

Binding a printer to a fixed IP address via IPP

With printers from the last ten years, printing should work again at this point, and no further action is required. If printing without cups-browsed does not work immediately, you need to bind the printer to a fixed IP address via IPP. To do this, open the same GUI used earlier, go to the Administration menu, and authenticate as root or as a user with administrator privileges, followed by your administrator password.

Then click Add Printer and select Internet Printing Protocol (ipp). After clicking Continue, enter a line following the scheme ipp:///ipp/print in the Connection field. For the printer shown in the screenshot above, the entry looks like this: ipp://192.168.178.134/ipp/print. Finally, select the manufacturer and model and click Add Printer. Your device should then appear under the Printers menu.