Managing CUPS from outside your home network

The ability to manage CUPS from outside your network (Remote Administration) can save your bacon sometimes. I had to do this when the kids were trying to print something that it wasn’t working.

CUPS is great, thank you Michael Sweet and also Apple, you have done a good job here – and that isn’t something I thought that I’d ever say about Apple.

If you want to manage a printer on one of your Linux machines from outside your network, allow port 631 through your firewall and edit the CUPS config, /etc/cups/cupsd.conf as follows:

In the and sections add Allow 257.257.257.257 after the Order statement. This isn’t a valid IP, you should replace this with the remote IP address, i.e. the public IP address that you will be connecting from.

Also add DefaultEncryption Never in the main section, I put it under the LogLevel statement.

You should then be able to point your web browser at your broadband connections IP_address:631 and get CUPS management. The URL in your web browser should look something like this:

http://257.257.257.257:631

Of course, 257 is not valid, I did that on purpose.

If you are in the UK, consider ICUK for broadband, they have a great network and broadband IP addresses, although dynamic, rarely change – I’ve been with them 5 years and my IP address has not changed. This makes connecting to machines in your own network very convenient.