We are all happily working from home nowadays, and I hope everybody is well. In many workplaces, teleworking was introduced in a hurry. The IT departments in some companies were not well prepared for this rapid increase in teleworking employees. I’ve come across a setup where a desktop PC is deployed to the employees’ home. The computer connects to the companies internal network via VPN and from there accesses the actual work PC using a remote desktop software.
The problem was, how to send documents to a printer at home from the remote desktop within the remote network? Changing the network settings or install the drivers for this particular printer required admin privileges.
The solution was a simple flask app with a bootstrapped user interface. The web2print service can run on any local machine with CUPS. Configure the firewall to allow only requests from within the companies network. The setup can be refined with nginx, any subdomain and a HTTPS certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
Happy printing at home.
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