Apple OS-X Printer Problems

Can't print to a shared printer?

You can see a printer shared from another computer in the printer setup and you successfully select it. When you try to print to the shared printer, all seems well but nothing happens. Opening the print manager presents you with the message:

"unable to lookup host <name of computer sharing the printer> unknown host"

The problem is almost certainly your hosts file. To fix it you need to use Terminal and log in as 'root' (you have set up a root password, haven't you?)

Once logged in, change to the /etc directory (cd /etc) and then edit the file 'hosts'.



Add a line as shown with the address of the host computer, a tab and the name of the host exactly as it appears in the 'Unable to lookup host' message. Then save the file and try your printer - it should now work.

Important: you will need to have fixed IP addresses on your network for this to work because if you use DHCP, the host's IP address may well change when it is switched on again. Also you must use a tab to seperate the IP address and host name, spaces may not work!