Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP
printervention.appI did this with a Raspberry Pi. The printer in question only has WiFi and USB, no ethernet (the WiFi wasn't stable, and I don't trust the TCP/IP stack anyway). So what I did was I connected it to a Raspberry Pi via USB which is connected via ethernet to the living room. I added AirPrint and brscan, and the device can be shared via usbip.
For example, you can use a USB SDR and connect to it via usbip.
Initially, I also had to actually use qemu x86-64 for the scanner part which wasn't ideal.
The only UI computers which use it, are Apple's (iPhone and iPad). In a world where the network is the computer, usbip and iscsi are very cool tech.
The reason I went with a Raspberry Pi is since it already acts as an interface for Valetudo. So it was already in use anyway. Also, I want to add Bluetooth for IoT scanning, considering to run Home Assistant on it.
But yes, what it does lack is a UI. I was thinking of adding something with a reverse proxy, but I have no idea what, and this whole project isn't residing in my house. It is in my mother's apartment.
I've been using a pi print server for a few years now. Runs my shipping label printer, an excellent HP color printer from the early 2000s, and a few other oddball printers
If you are using an LLM, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just have the LLM find the relevant CUPS driver decompile or just capture the USB traffic, and rewrite it in Go or something native? (No need to deal with the system printing framework, the goal was just an app that accepts JPEG input.)
Interesting suggestion: I guess that would have been possible. On the other hand I think this is a more general solution, and it does minimal reinventing-the-wheel.
That's definitely possible for simpler drivers (CUPS filters) which accept CUPS-raster data for input. That's a majority of drivers for old printers.
Or ask the agent to write a Dockerfile (to abstract the build environment) that builds CUPS and all your stuff around it directl in WASM, instead of targeting x86 and then emulating x86 with WASM.
Is there a Docker-to-WASM pipeline, and how does it do anything differently from emulating x86?
I'm using an ancient Canon Selphy photo printer... on Windows 11 without any issues. Using the Windows 7 64-bit driver, worked basically out-of-the-box. It's definitely not officially supported, but to date it works totally fine.
Huh, interesting. Is the driver built in to Windows, downloaded from Canon, or acquired some other way?
TBH the web app story on Windows isn’t ideal anyway because you have to install Zadig before it will work.
I think I downloaded it from Canon 5-6 years ago. It should still be around I guess, but I can share it if needed.
EDIT: you can find it here for example: https://asia.canon/en/support/0100304802
>Perhaps I could set them up a Raspberry Pi as a print server? But that would make it not so cheap. And anyway, I’m not convinced they’d go for the extra plugs and wires.
$35 and it's yours, with tech support and CUPS/SANE development funding included, and all open source: https://printserver.ink
Extra plugs could be eliminated with the help of "IEC320 3 pin C14 TO Male C13+2" cable: https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/S4c8681fb1283499b8...
> 1 GiB LPDDR4
Wouldn't this be a huge problem trying to print anything with images or more than a page or two (most PDFs for example)?
Okay, this is reasonably genius. I have quite a few USB devices lying around that are either old enough or were niche enough that they don't work on modern _anything_, even Linux. One of them is a GameBoy Advance flash cartridge.
Oh, there's a thought - v86 supports lots of old DOS/Windows versions too, so assuming you could get the right port through (probably easy with anything USB, maybe possible with other things?) you could probably use your choice of old drivers:)
> I must apologise that I haven’t so far open-sourced any part of this that I don’t have to. Mainly that’s because I think this would be an awesomely sticky web property for a printer consumables firm to integrate with their sales site. And I’d much prefer it if they paid me to white-label it for them, rather than just forking a repo and getting it all for free.
They might be interested if they cared at all about the ease of use of their printers
The hardest part would probably be convincing someone to pay to white label something for which most of the key design choices and implementation came from one unfamiliar dev prompting an £18 Claude Code subscription.
These printer makers have the source code and the ability to write firmware. If they wanted to support WebUSB, they could and would.
Xerox just removed all the Linux drivers first for the majority of older models (even actual ones, which you can still buy), Windows and macOS drivers second for selected models (yet).
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/xerox-removed-linux-d...
https://forum.support.xerox.com/community?id=community_quest...
Canon, Pantum, Brother, Kyocera, HP, they all still produce new devices on older hardware base, which require driver and does not support AirPrint/Mopria even over USB. They just don't care, they reuse what they wrote 20 years ago and ship it. Xerox and HP use Samsung printing engine and drivers, Pantum uses Lexmark.
They are referring to aftermarket ink cartridge companies, not the printer OEM.
I know that it is a heavyweight solution, but it could be useful for some situations with old driver/devices/applications. I have some old hardware that is compatible only with pre-WinNT OS, and I could do something similar to provide a simple solution for the end user.
Would such old hardware even be able to run a modern browser needed for this?
Sorry, I wasn't clear. By old hardware, I meant peripherals connected to the computer via serial or USB. We are at a level of performance where running an entire VM as a driver is kind of feasible, if wasteful.
You run old operating system in browser as a gateway.
So. Does this methodology mean someone can surreptitiously boot up a Linux VM running Wireguard in your browser and be inside your firewall via chrome.sockets API?
You don’t need a VM. Do what Netbird does. Compile wireguard-go to WASM and you’re g2g
https://docs.netbird.io/about-netbird/browser-client-archite...
No? It's still a web page. And the chrome socket API was deprecated and removed for everyone except ChromeOS users in certain cases. The closest you can get is installing a Chrome extension that exposes sockets, but if someone is able to do that, they don't need the browser for help.
Moreover, you don't even need Linux and Wireguard. WebRTC accomplishes p2p encrypted traffic without libraries.
One thing I appreciate here is that it treats old hardware as worth saving, not as a nuisance to route around. There’s a lot of hidden value in software that extends the life of perfectly functional devices, especially when the alternative is replacing them for reasons that are mostly ecosystem drift. This is the good kind of absurd.
Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!".
I have an old-ish Samsung laser printer that works perfectly and a Linux file server at home and the printer no longer supports AirPrint.
I never thought about using the Linux box as an AirPrint server! This will free me from all the odd print requests from my kids! (probably)
Been doing something similar with a Samsung printer and CUPS for years, it’s great
Found this helpful for generating some of the config files: https://github.com/tjfontaine/airprint-generate
It’ll work great if you can get the drivers all aligned properly. I’ve tried a few times to get my 12 year old Brother laser setup like that, and each time I end up throwing in the towel.
Maybe I’ll try it again someday with an LLM assisting.
I have a Samsung ML-1740 kicking around still that I just can't bear to part with; I've been meaning forever to RasPi-ify it, but it's one of those projects that feels like it's going to end up being a rabbit hole.
>but it's one of those projects that feels like it's going to end up being a rabbit hole.
I know your feelings. I've started https://printserver.ink because I wanted to buy a retail print server and could not find any. I was expecting half a year overall work for everything, but fixing all printer-related bugs for 3 years already.
ML-1740 is supported by the driver available here: https://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/index.html Works on my arm64 sbc as a cups printer for another samsung printer
It's a Samsung SPL device, it's supported by SpliX: https://github.com/OpenPrinting/splix
Yup, I used splix with it for years on Mac, so I think that will be the way to go.
I have an old Epson MX80 dot-matrix printer in the closet, have thought about getting a Raspberry Pi and setting that up so we can wirelessly print to it. But... who would really want that?
For a printer like an Epson MX80 an esp32 should be enough to share the printer on a raw TCP interface (AppSocket I think the protocol is named) on port 9100. It is supported by Windows and CUPS.
Very easy implementation as it essentially it just forwards the data to the printer. Since it's a raw interface you need the proper driver, but luckily Epson provides a Windows 10 driver for the Epson MX-80 (!) [1] CUPS doesn't have driver for the MX-80 but it has a number of generic Epson drivers and my guess is that one of those will work.
The most difficult part is probably the parallel interface (unless you have a printer with a serial interface in which case it will be much easier)
[1] https://epson.com/Support/Printers/Impact-Printers/MX-Series...
Doesn't Apple outright uses CUPS in the first place ? Did they just removed old drivers in their version ?
You might think that such an important and long-standing feature as printing would undoubtedly be backed up by a large company. This was true until 2019, when it was backed by Apple. Currently, however, CUPS and all related projects are supported by volunteers, including myself.
Apple abandoned CUPS years ago, and recently have archived the repo on github: https://github.com/apple/cups
All the current development runs in OpenPrinting github: https://github.com/OpenPrinting, and mostly focused on newer projects, such as CUPS v3, PAPPL, Printer Applications.
Recent versions of CUPS v2 are still used in Chrome OS and Chromebooks though (apart from all Linuxes).
I'd be curious if cups works on wsl as well...
I would have asked Claude to write a driver. But this works, too. :)
This is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.
Isn't cups a de facto apple project? What's the VM getting you?
The gutenprint drivers to support the specific printer don't support darwin
Gutenprint supports macos as a first class citizen, including this particular printer AFAICT.
From the Gutenprint home page, https://gimp-print.sourceforge.io/:
As of July 7, 2024 the Gutenprint project has formally deprecated MacOS support. This means that no further MacOS-compatible binaries will be produced.
Gutenprint has not had an active MacOS maintainer for over three years, and the remaining developers lack the technical ability to produce MacOS binaries, much less undertake the substantial amount of work necessary to produce, test, and support binaries on newer (post-Mojave/10.14) MacOS releases.
It looks like it's just because they had no way to test, and bandwidth to deal with it. But should still mostly work, once whatever issue (that sounds like app notrization) is fixed.
It seems like the better option would have been to fix whatever was blocking them just two years ago, rather than this wild rube goldberg machine of a Linux VM emulated in a browser tab.
I mean, anyone is welcome to do just that! But I guess coding Rube Goldberg machines in JS (to push the boundaries of the web) is a thing I really kind of enjoy.
No. Most cups changes nowadays happen in https://github.com/openprinting/cups?tab=readme-ov-file
See here for the details: https://openprinting.github.io/achievements/#cups-upstream-h...
Oh, OK, new information, thanks!
But this driver is older than OpenPrinting's fork from Apple CUPS.
Too bad Apple is still preventing the WebUSB spec from being standardized. They won't even make suggestions to get it through committee because WebUSB might cut into their native app store.
From: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebUSB_API "WebUSB provides a way for these non-standardized USB device services to be exposed to the web. This means that hardware manufacturers will be able to provide a way for their device to be accessed from the web, without having to provide their own API."
That doesn't sound secure at all!
Which is why Firefox doesn't support it either.
Firefox's non-reasons are just as lame as Apple's non-reasons. These APIs aren't security risks, the user has to explicitly opt-in on every website that requests USB access, just like every other privacy-risky API that a website requests, like microphone and camera access. WebUSB is no different.
The only thing that has changed since camera and microphone access was allowed is that Apple now considers web apps to cut into their app store business, so they are unwilling to let any new APIs get approved that would make a web app as capable as a native app. This includes WebBluetooth and other APIs.
Apple is also getting sued by the DOJ for exactly this type of shady business practice.
And I don't really think what Firefox says is relevant, they are so cash-strapped I would not doubt that Apple pays them to have a negative opinion about new web APIs just so people like you can say "Firefox doesn't want it either".
The truth is there is no good reason to block WebUSB and WebBluetooth from becoming standards.
The user gets spammed with a million permissions popups a day and has no idea what they are actually accepting or what the risks are. The same looking permissions popup usually means something incredibly trivial like notifications or camera, while the webusb spec is exposing you to potentially high risks of damage to hardware or data theft.
>The user gets spammed with a million permissions popups a day and has no idea what they are actually accepting or what the risks are.
"A million" is quite the hyperbole. So let's just not do anything anymore because it might cause a permission popup? Or because some idiot might trust a scam website? That's your argument? Sorry, it's not a good argument.
>while the webusb spec is exposing you to potentially high risks of damage to hardware or data theft.
Please explain a realistic scenario where a website >that someone trusts< is going to "damage hardware or cause data theft".
I'll wait.
I don't care about someone's stupid grandfather that is going to find a way to get hacked one way or another - he's not a good reason to hold the rest of us back.
That's nonsense. You have to opt-in on any website that is requesting USB access, just like every other useful but potentially privacy-risky browser API.
Plenty of sites ask for camera access, and that is typically a USB device. Plenty of sites ask for microphone accesss, which can be a USB device. And even if those aren't always USB devices, they are still very much a privacy risk that browsers all allow. USB access is no different, a website can't just do whatever it wants, you have to give it permission to use it first. And it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing either, it could be implemented to allow the browser to access only specific USB devices.
Apple is holding back progress in favor of profit. They profit when developers are forced to create a native app where Apple can extract 30% of revenue through the app.
It's not about if the camera is a USB device or not, it's about what the capabilities being exposed is. Web browsers aren't just handing over the webcam as an arbitrary USB device, they are presenting a media stream from them. Which means they can't for example send arbitrary commands, flash firmware, or do any of the infinite things a USB device might present.
I don't care?
I'm not giving any old website access to all of my USB devices. I'd expect to give a website I trust access to a specific USB device. I'm not sure why you think this has to be a willy-nilly free-access-to-everything feature.
Yes, I want to give access to site XYZ to a product purchased from site XYZ to do amazing things over WebUSB.
If that isn't the current spec, then change the spec so it's good.
But Apple just doesn't give a single shit to propose any changes because doing so would hurt their precious app store just a little bit.
Mozilla doesn’t want it either.
I don't really think what Mozilla says is relevant, they are so cash-strapped I would not doubt that Apple pays them to have a negative opinion about new web APIs just so people like you can say "Mozilla doesn't want it either".
what the heck we're not in web 1.0 anymore are we
Oh neat. v86 is mentioned in the FOSDEM 2025 slides [0] for another wasm port of QEMU. Interesting that what appears to be v86's inability to run x86 executables didn't fuck you.
I wonder why the decision wasn't made to use the network sharing features of SANE and CUPS, instead of requiring one to use Chrome due to the WebUSB dependency. Seems to me that you'd have a way more general solution if you could usefully deploy your VM both in any major web browser and as a standalone program.
[0] <https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-20...>
Can you elaborate on how using the network sharing features of CUPS would let you achieve the same thing (printing to old USB printers) in any major web browser?
Given your commercial aspirations, I'm happy to consult on your project as a paid contractor.
Fair enough! I just don’t think I fully understand what you’re suggesting.
> I just don’t think I fully understand what you’re suggesting.
Sure, sure.
Like I said, given your commercial (and closed-source) aspirations, I'm happy to consult on your project as a paid contractor. Doing work for free on a closed-source for-profit project is neither interesting nor in my interest.
Another AI add.
surely a glorious OS like osx would not be without support for hardware that linux supports? when will it be year of osx desktop?
wdym?
OSX has literally always been supported only on very limited hardware so how would it support anything else?
did you read what this is about? support for a printer people buy in stores. the kinda thing people expect working?
Oh I thought you were referring to the VM part
Anyway Apple created CUPS so it should support anything Linux does when it comes to printing
edit: looks like they didn’t create it, they just hired the guy who did and shipped it