Avahi and AirPrint
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Hi all, have PF 2.4.3 with Avahi 1.12 installed. I am trying to get AirPrint working
The printers are on the LAN network and WiFi users with iPhones/iPads are on a separate VLAN, VLAN 10. What's annoying is that it intermittently works or sometimes works after the Avahi service is restarted. Even sometimes after a restart it still won't work.
I have setup firewall rules to send traffic from LAN to the printer aliases (2 printers) and also from LAN to 224.0.0.251 (Bonjour Address). Also FW rules between VLAN 10 and 224.0.0.251 and VLAN 10 and printer aliases
Has anyone got this working in a stable environment? Any help would be appreciated
Thanks in advance
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I have a reliable avahi system but airprint is just finicky IMHO. I use this which works reliably. Airprint still occasionally doesn't find printer. If you want/need a quick solution, its worthe the few bucks. If you manage to debug airprint please post back.
https://readdle.com/printerpro
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Thanks, does it work across multiple subnets/VLANs though. That’s the only reason I’m using Avahi, if it’s a single network then no probs with it working, it’s because the LAN and VLAN are 2 diff subnets
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@stinkfly it does, but you might need to configure other devices in your network to support cross VLAN traffic, i.e wifi APs, switches. Do you have other multicast traffic working or is your problem exhibiting itself on all types of multicast traffic? If its just printing, that software may solve your issues, if its with other sources of traffic like video, its probably worth debugging more fundamental setup problems first.
Theres some useful tools like iNet on iOS thats useful for debugging multicast too. -
I have AirPrint working across VLANs (I have my printers on a printer VLAN and my iPhones on a home VLAN). I have Avahi enabled and Bonjour firewall rules on both VLANs, as well as the rules that allow printing across VLANs. But, I had to turn off Avahi because all of my Apple devices started renaming themselves after detecting apparent conflicts. One got all the way up to iMac-10 before I disabled Avahi. I couldn't find a solution to that problem, but AirPrint worked great before I disabled Avahi.
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@q54e3w, thanks for your other ideas. There's also an Apple TV in the LAN network but that seems to be working ok. I guess AirPrint itself seems very finicky, I might end up putting the Printers into the same VLAN as the users.
Thank you all who have replied, this is real encouragement for me as others have helped a complete stranger. Reminds me to contribute and not just consume
Kind regards
Stinkfly -
@tcw said in Avahi and AirPrint:
Snip... But, I had to turn off Avahi because all of my Apple devices started renaming themselves after detecting apparent conflicts. One got all the way up to iMac-10 before I disabled Avahi. I couldn't find a solution to that problem, but AirPrint worked great before I disabled Avahi.
I’ve spent some time debugging that issue, I thought it could be my switch which wasn’t configured for automatic leave or something but never did get to bottom of that. It only seems to occur with my Apple devices too so probably related to their implementation. If anyone has any ideas would love to solve.
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@tcw said in Avahi and AirPrint:
But, I had to turn off Avahi because all of my Apple devices started renaming themselves after detecting apparent conflicts. One got all the way up to iMac-10 before I disabled Avahi. I couldn't find a solution to that problem, but AirPrint worked great before I disabled Avahi.
In the Avahi settings, set Maximum Cache Size to
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@tcw said in Avahi and AirPrint:
I had to turn off Avahi because all of my Apple devices started renaming themselves after detecting apparent conflicts
Strange.
Have a basket full with apples here, and never saw this behavior.
All your apples have an unique "name" ?My
**Maximum Cache Size** The size of the object cache. Leave blank for default, 0 to disable. Disabling the cache can help with object duplication when reflecting.isn't filled in / contains nothings.
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@gertjan said in Avahi and AirPrint:
@tcw said in Avahi and AirPrint:
I had to turn off Avahi because all of my Apple devices started renaming themselves after detecting apparent conflicts
Strange.
Have a basket full with apples here, and never saw this behavior.
All your apples have an unique "name" ?My
**Maximum Cache Size** The size of the object cache. Leave blank for default, 0 to disable. Disabling the cache can help with object duplication when reflecting.isn't filled in / contains nothings.
Yes, they are all unique. It’s as though they were seeing reflections of themselves and trying to de-conflict multiple times.
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Humm ...
Then it is this "smart" switch I guess - I have none (one need to be smart to use smart switches ... etc etc - didn't work out for me) -
AirPrint, Remote, and device names have been behaving normally for me across multiple VLANs/subnets for the last few days now. Thanks for the tip on object cache size.
