mod: print server?

[welf]

In my ongoing quest to make the humax do things it was never meant to do I've noticed that it is sat quite close to my printer...

how difficult (/memory intensive) would it be to run a print server on the humax?

 

[Black Hole]

What - you mean so you can connect the printer to the USB? First find a driver!

 

[welf]

Yes, so I can attach my printer to the hummy through usb.
Ubuntu finds a driver for my HP printer pretty much straight away, so I guess I can use that? but I presume it would need to sit inside some kind of framework such as CUPS?

 

[neilleeds]

Yes, so I can attach my printer to the hummy through usb.
Ubuntu finds a driver for my HP printer pretty much straight away, so I guess I can use that? but I presume it would need to sit inside some kind of framework such as CUPS?

I expect you would need one that is compiled for the MIPS (I think) processor rather than X86. I.E. The standard Ubuntu driver would not work.

 

[Black Hole]

Quite so, and for the Humax version of Linux - basically you would need to compile from source, and then you still have to find a way to communicate with the driver from whatever you are intending to print from. It would be a better bet to find a driver capable of networking the USB port generally so that it becomes a network share much like a hard drive can be a network share.

 

[welf]

OK, this sounds more complicated than I had thought.

It would be a better bet to find a driver capable of networking the USB port generally so that it becomes a network share much like a hard drive can be a network share.

Is this something that might be possible? It sounds like it would be pretty useful.

 

[Black Hole]

Is this something that might be possible? It sounds like it would be pretty useful.

No idea, and yes it would.

I have a couple of boxes sold under the Medion brand (Aldi) that connect to your home network by Ethernet or WiFi, and have three USB ports and an audio jack in them. You have to run a utility on the PC, but it finds the boxes on your network and any USB devices connected to them, and you can tick a box to selectively enable them on your PC and bingo - it's like they are plugged in locally. You can also transfer your sound output to the extender's output socket - which is great unless you are watching video, when the lag is intolerable.

Unfortunately I bought one when they were in store, found out what a brilliant device it is and scoured the Aldis local to me and Super Lurker and got another, but not been seen since. I guess they might come around again.

 

[welf]

They sound pretty useful. Could they be running something like this?
http://usbip.sourceforge.net/
It sounds like it does what you're describing, would it be a possibility for compiling on the humax?

 

[Black Hole]

Interesting! I guess it would but I'm no expert. I'm sure nobody's going to mind if you wanted to explore the possibility.

 

[welf]

It's a bit beyond me to be honest. It looks like the linux branch is maintained as part of the overall linux kernel. I would assume that means it would need to be included as part of the base mod?