Hi.
On Sun, Jun 10, 2018 at 03:21:45PM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
I have printers attached via USB to my Debian/Stretch server and also one
that also has an ethernet connection. The problem I'm having is that the
virtual machines seem to grab exclusive access to the printers, so I can
print from my Linux (Debian/Buster) workstation.
QEMU USB redirection (whenever native QEMU or that impressive trick with
usbip virt-manager does) is implemented that way. You can provide a single
host with any USB device, but the access is exclusive.
The printers show in the CUPS web interface and also in the print dialogues
but CUPS reports the printers aren't communicating when I try to print to
them.
Of course it works that way. CUPS stores access parameters for any
configured printer, but checks if it's accessible only at printing time.
I can print to the one that has a network connector, but only through that
port.
And that is also working exactly the way it's intended. IPP is designed
for concurrent access, USB does not.
Is there any way to be able to share a USB printer with a virtual machine?
Configure CUPS to provide an access to a printer via conventional
tcp:631 (i.e. network). Use network access to CUPS from all your virtual
machines. They gave you full-fledged print server with a network
capability, you might as well use it the way it was intended.