network printing
Published by peter March 21st, 2006 in linux.Instead of the ‘my printer won’t work on linux’ story I actually discovered something neat today when trying to print on the HP Color Laserjet 4600. By running nmap to view to open ports on the network printer I noticed port 21 (ftp) to be open.
I ftp’ed into the printer, and was able to see the print queue by listing the directory. Uploading a postscript document directly into the queue directory made the printer print it.
No installation needed, at al….
I googled arround a bit to discover the supported formats, couldn’t find them… but I found a page on printer hacking:
http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/networkprinterhacking
They actually make a sport out of everything these days 
How about PCL or EPS?
If that is possible then the sky is the limit: will try to FTP an MPEG file to our TV set, and a MIDI file to our piano
Actually I think it would make sense to put the logic of knowing how to handle data in the ‘client’ and have a uniform way of transfering data to and from the client…