How do I print from across the Internet using CUPS

Question

I work as the programmer/IT guy at a small company and I've run into a bit of a problem.

Hardware is assembled here at the office but the hardware face plates are screen printed at my house by my mom. She has this stick about things and requires a Purchase Order to be delivered from the office. Printing one out herself via email isn't an option (it just isn't, don't ask for a reasonable answer).

Because I happen to live in the same house, It's up to me to deliver these Purchase Orders, and I'm just not good at it. I forget, or she's not home, or I don't go directly home or whatever.

Actual Question: I would like to send a document to a printer here at the office, and have the result spat out by the Canon Print Device at home. There is at least one Linux and one Windows computer at both ends (Ubuntu or XP). Is this possible?

Answer 1

Any recent version of Windows will let you use the Internet Printing Protocol. You just need to open a hole in the firewall for the port. After that it is pretty easy to send print jobs through the internet.

Answer 2

This depends a lot on the connectivity between your house and office. You basically need to set up a tunnel or VPN between the two to print directly.

That said, there are other things you could maybe do like: email PDFs from the house to an email address that some software on the ubuntu machine checks automatically and if found downloads and prints any PDFs. Mildly insecure, but less so than opening your printer up to the wilds of the internet, and it should be within the reach of a reasonable sized perl program.

Answer 3

Another approach might be RemoteByEmail and pretty simple to implement it's free