Hello,
The printer is not functioning is the guest distribution *buntu, how to make it work?
What kind of printer? USB? Did you install the Oracle extension pack that allows the guest to use the host’s USB port?
Yes I installed the extension pack also, I followed this post entirely. The printer is old Samsung printer. And it is connect to the pc (opensuse 11.4) from the back side of the cpu, surely is usb printer.
There’s a little icon in the bottom right of the screen (in Virtualbox) showing active USB devices. Does the printer show up there?
On 12/23/2011 07:06 AM, gminnerup wrote:
>
> There’s a little icon in the bottom right of the screen (in Virtualbox)
> showing active USB devices. Does the printer show up there?
USB devices cannot be shared between the host and the guest. Once you tell VB to
capture it, it is no longer available to the host. I doubt that you want this.
I think you need to set up printer sharing in the host using YaST. My only
printer has a network interface, thus I do not need to do this, and have no
experience.
Not its not showing, however, I can successfully take prints in the opensuse 11.4. This view.
Apart from it, can I also delete the icon of the guest addition cd (which comes after starting the guest *buntu, in its own desktop)? {I installed guest addition for vitualbox for *buntu}.
I no longer have a USB printer (well I still have it but it’s now connected via Ethernet) so I’m going on memory here but yes, you do have to activate it by ticking the box in the location I mentioned above and that disables it in the host. But then again, once VB is closed control of the printer is returned to the host. I never found that a problem as I rarely need to print from both host and guest in the same session.
Sharing the printer from the host, as per lwfinger’s suggestion, is one option. But as I suggested in my reply to him, it is possible to have a USB printer installed in both host and guest even though you’ll probably be unable to use it from both in the same session. Have you tried installing it in the normal way in Ubuntu, and what happens when you do?
In fact Ubuntu doesn’t detect it at all! It show there is no printer connected!
Well, that is okay it cannot be shared simultaneously but even after capturing it is not at all detected by the guest distribution, even if not available to host. To make it unavailable to host, should I manually achieve this using Yast or it automatically happens that the host is disconnected from the printer once the guest is started, however, no printer was connected in my case.
That means that your USB doesn’t work in Virtualbox. I think you said the guest additions/extensions were installed, so have a look in your machine details in VB without starting it. What does it say in the USB section? I never needed to define any device filters but you could try. Do you have any other USB devices (mouse, USB stick, scanner) that you could try?
Never installed a printer in Ubuntu, but I assume it uses CUPS? Did openSUSE automatically detect your printer or did you have to install a proprietary driver? Have a look at CUPS in openSUSE and what it says about your printer and see if there’s any clues.
First task is to establish beyond doubt whether it’s a problem with the USB support in Virtualbox, or with the printer in Ubuntu.
Yes extensions pack was installed. Amazingly when I added the printer in the ‘usb filter device’ option of 'USB" section, it is working, I simply didn’t understand the reason that without it, printer won’t work. If you never defined any device filter, did it work? I had to define else it didn’t, I don’t know the reason behind it… I tried with another USB pen drive also, but again, I had to define it in the same location…! openSUSE automatically detected the printer but the drivers were not found! I had to search and install the drivers for my old Samsung printer. I didn’t see the CUPS ever, but just installed the driver and the printer always works in the host openSUSE 11.4.
Well OK, we’re getting somewhere, and that’s good news! Maybe the reason I never needed USB device filters is because I’m using VB for Windows mainly, but who cares? You got it to work, that’s all that matters.
As to CUPS, I think all Linux distros use it for printer configuration, but it’s not always obvious. You can use YAST to configure printers but all that matters in the end is CUPS. Do some googling about CUPS, it’s well worth it if you want to learn about printers and Linux. Apple Macs use it too, in fact it’s copyright Apple if I remember correctly…
Ok well, I would see the CUPS too, but thanks that it ultimately worked, really who cares for why and how. Thanks.