2014-03-15

Fixing can't print to shared Canon LBP 6000 in Mac OS X

In successfully installed a Canon LBP 6000 on my Mac Mini and was able to print to it.  I then turned on printer sharing and shared it.  I was able to see the shared printer listed on my Macbook Air, but when I tried to print to it over the network it would say processing for a long time, and then switch to paused.  When I checked the printer status on the Mac Mini, there was no sign that the print job had ever been received.

Long story short, it turns out that the problem occurred because I had previously connected the LBP 6000 to the Macbook Air by USB and installed the Canon CAPT driver for the printer, and for some reason this caused the Macbook Air to assume the printer was directly connected when I tried to use the remote printer.  You can see that this is happening by going to Apple->About this Mac->System Report and then looking at Printers, and then looking at the URI entry for the remote printer.  For remote printers the URI should be something sort of like this:


dnssd://LBP6000%2FLBP6018%20%40%20Zihuatanejo._ipp._tcp.local./

If a previous installation of the Canon CAPT driver on the computer you are trying to print from is causing problems the URI will look something like this:

URI: cnbma://localhost:59687

In other words, the system somehow thinks the remote printer is actually directly connected, so it tries to send the job to a local resource and it eventually times out.

What worked to resolve the problem was to delete the Canon CAPT printer driver from the Macbook Air, reboot, and then add the remote printer again.

On the computer that you are having trouble printing remotely from open Finder and select Go > Go to Folder and then type

/Library/Printers/Canon

and press Go. If you see a CUPSCAPT folder it means the Canon driver was previously installed. Delete all the CUPSCAPT folders.

Also, using Go > Go to Folder, type

/Library/Caches/Canon

and press Go. If you see a CUPSCAPT folder, delete it.

Also go to /Library/Printers>PPDs>Contents>Resources and delete all Canon files (don't remember how they are named, but the start with C something).

Then reboot the computer and then add the remote printer again.