Print a PDF on a printer without CUPS or other driver

I think CUPS is too much. I just want to print simple files from the command line. This is how it works for me with the printers I have been connecting to.

Depending on how your printer is connected, the target to which you pipe will differ

• if connected through the local network, you can use netcat, nc, lp, or even just pipe to /dev/tcp/<ip>/<port> on some systems.
• if connected through USB, the printer might have been made available as a USB device in /dev/usb/<something> or /dev/usb0 (…or usb1).

In the examples below I am using a network printer and connecting to it using the following information:

$ export PRINTER_IP=192.168.0.5 PRINTER_PORT=9100

Print plain text or raw PostScript

If you simply want to print plain text, you can pipe it straight through

$ echo "hello, world!" | nc -w 1 $PRINTER_IP $PRINTER_PORT

Print a PDF

If you want to print a PDF, you most probably have to convert it to PostScript first. I use pdf2ps for this. Using - as a target filename will output to stdout.

$ pdf2ps ~/my-file.pdf - | nc -w 1 $PRINTER_IP $PRINTER_PORT

Using lp

If you want to use lp for printing, use the -h argument. Specifying - as input filename will make it read from stdin.

$ echo foobar | lp -h ${PRINTER_IP}:${PRINTER_PORT} -

References

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30130190/linux-print-directly-to-network-printer-that-is-not-installed/