The original source of this file resides on github.com/derjohn

Everything is a Makefile. Use make <TAB><TAB> or make help

Basically make docker-run should work, if you have docker installed.

The container name is by default pdf-e-mail-printer, the image is derjohn/pdf-e-mail-printer. This is also available on dockerhub

Usage: make <target>
  docker-build  Build the container - if you don't want to use the version available on docker hub.
  docker-run  Start the container
  docker-exec  Enters the container. Only needed for debugging.
  docker-logs  Shows the logs of the running container.
  show-env    Show the currently configured env vars

The configuration is done via env vars. Look into the file envrc.sample. Your might

source your-envvarfile

or create a .envrc file and install direnv

apt install direnv

If you want to check stuff in the containers print queue, you can access it like this.

http://127.0.0.1:10631

user: print / pass: print

Personally I don't like cups very much. But by creating this system I got some insight :) I see two ways to print over the container

Set the cups server env var, so you application will use it directly.

CUPS_SERVER=127.0.0.1:10631 kate fixtures/test.txt

or

CUPS_SERVER=127.0.0.1:10631 okular fixtures/sample.pdf

You can configure your cups to have an additional printer, which resides inside the container.

You pobably need something like this in your /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf

IPBasedDeviceURIs IPv4
BrowsePoll 127.0.0.1:10631

And maybe

BrowseAllow 127.0.0.1:10631

I personally use that printer with xfreerdp and inject it as a ressource in a virtual cloud-hosted windows system.

xfreerdp .... /printer:"pdf_to_email_in_docker,Apple Color LW 12/660 PS"

That Apple printer is a postscript one and is included in Windows since aeons. (Windows XP)

On Debian and Ubuntu the package printer-driver-cups-pdf contains the PPDs (Printer descriptions). They reside in /usr/share/ppd/cups-pdf/ , but the good thing is: Your client doesn't need them. The cups server delivers the details about the printer to the client.

https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/CUPS-PDF/

https://github.com/olbat/dockerfiles/tree/master/cupsd

https://github.com/majochoc/cloudprint

1. I already installed 'stapler' in the container. This is a utility to make stamp or watermarks over a PDF. This might be handy, if you want to print e.g. a company logo on the PDF.
2. Create a sample Kubernetes deployment
3. Multiple printers with different configs
4. Save the PDFs on a volume, so that you can copy them from the filesystem

If you do something with this system, I would like to hear, how you use it! I will happily accept pull requests.