[NTLUG:Discuss] Can I share a USB printer and CD Writer?

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 13 Apr 2001 23:00:08 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Neil Aggarwal <neil at JAMMConsulting.com>  said:
> I have a home network where I have two Windows NT Laptops
> connected thru a hub to a Linux machine.
> 
> The linux machine is 192.168.1.1
> The laptops are 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3.
> 
> Is it possible to connect a USB printer and CD Writer
> to the linux machine and be able to use it from
> all 3 machines?

There are several _further_ questions that you'll have to answer.

-> Are the printer and CD writer supported?

   See: <http://www.linux-usb.org/devices.html> for more details.

   Note that you probably want to run a 2.4.x kernel; that's where
   there is a maximum number of supported devices, although many
   device drivers are being backported to 2.2.

-> What are you planning to do with the devices?

   If you set up a print queue for LPD, and export that using SAMBA,
   that should work quite nicely to expose the printer to the network.
   LPD and SAMBA won't be aware that it's using USB; they just ship
   output to /dev/lp0 (or wherever).

   What capabilities can be exported for the CD writer needs to
   parallel this.  You can export filesystems using NFS and SAMBA;
   note that this does _not_ directly expose the CD writer to remote
   machines.  

   The remote machines thus may read data on CD filesystems that are
   mounted on the Linux box.  

   But the only machine that can _write_ to a CD is the Linux box.
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