Is it possible to access a USB printer from inside a jail?

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Middling

Dabbler
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Mar 3, 2012
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I'm thinking it's not possible with the way FreeNAS currently implements jails.

I want to set up CUPS to access a Dell 1130 USB printer because the Mac OS X drivers are buggy and require you to pull and reinsert the USB plug after every print job.

This is further complicated by not having native BSD drivers for the printer (it's a rebadged Samsung ML-1910, and i've actually flashed the ML-1910 firmware to the printer in the hope that it'll fix the OS X problems. No luck), so i set up the CUPS jail to use Linux emulation and got to the point where everything *seems* to work but nothing gets printed.

I'm guessing FreeNAS doesn't allow a jail to take control of a USB port/device, but confirmation from someone in the know would be nice so i don't waste any more time trying to sort this.
 

Middling

Dabbler
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Mar 3, 2012
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Yeah, i've read those links. Not the same situation though as his printer was connected to the network, not via USB so didn't need direct hardware access.
 

Dusan

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Jan 29, 2013
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Yeah, i've read those links. Not the same situation though as his printer was connected to the network, not via USB so didn't need direct hardware access.
Oh. It should still be possible but you need to setup proper devfs rules so that the jail can access USB devices. I did not try it, so I can't give you exact instructions you need to google / read the FreeBSD documentation and experiment. (Example: getting sound working in a FreeBSD jail: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?&t=23361).
 

Middling

Dabbler
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Mar 3, 2012
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Yeah, i figured it was due to devfs settings, but i don't really want to modify anything on the FreeNAS host.

Good excuse to finally pick up a Raspberry Pi i suppose. :D

Thanks anyway.
 
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