What is HBOX_LABEL_MAKER_PRINT_COMMAND?

[agryson]

Does anyone have an example of what is meant by this env variable?

The documentation here says

the command to use for printing labels. if empty, label printing is disabled. {{.FileName}} in the command will be replaced with the png filename of the label

But it's not in this documentation at all so maybe one of these is out of date?

I hope to get a label printer and was wondering if this is some env variable that could be used to print straight to the device or something?

[tankerkiller125]

The hay-kot documentation is not the documentation for this fork. The first documentation you linked is correct. I'd have to dig into the code again, but I do believe that the variable gives you a way to print labels directly to the label printer without dealing with the OS print screen.

[agryson]

Ah, be wary of googling then, only go through links in this repo. Thanks.

That functionality sounds like exactly what I was hoping for!
I'll have a look at the commit history myself, see if there are clues to its use.

[agryson]

So I found this in the PR that added this variable.

I haven't tested it but it looks like you'd fill this variable with a string like "lp {{.FileName}} -d labelprinter" and it would be parsed and run on the server. Having such a printer available to the docker container is probably an exercise left to the reader.

Not sure how safe it is to just run code like that but I suppose if a bad agent has access to my env vars I'm already 💀

[agryson]

So I've set up my label printer, connected it to a CUPS server running on an old raspberry pi and can successfully print to it manually (from the server) using:
echo foo | lp -h printer.local -d QL-800

I configured the variable like this:
- HBOX_LABEL_MAKER_PRINT_COMMAND='lp -h printer.local:631 -d QL-800 {{.FileName}}'

But the log is spitting out this:

4:55PM INF ../go/src/app/internal/web/mid/logger.go:36 > request received method=GET path=/api/v1/labelmaker/asset/000-001 rid=3a2f7d83fdb6/NEkbH3EX3N-000247

4:55PM ERR ../go/src/app/internal/web/mid/errors.go:31 > ERROR occurred error="exec: \"'lp\": executable file not found in $PATH" req_id=3a2f7d83fdb6/NEkbH3EX3N-000247

4:55PM INF ../go/src/app/internal/web/mid/logger.go:41 > request finished method=GET path=/api/v1/labelmaker/asset/000-001 rid=3a2f7d83fdb6/NEkbH3EX3N-000247 status=500

I can print manually from an ssh session no problem - any hints anyone can provide?

[tankerkiller125]

How are you running Homebox? Docker?

[agryson]

Yes, docker compose

[agryson]

From what I understand, the host's PATH is not (and should not be) accessible from the container by design.

As lp is not bundled into the container, I can't see how this env variable works - has anyone gotten this to work and can point out what I'm doing wrong?

[agryson]

Success 💪
I worked around this by using cp (which is available) and mounting a folder as a volume.
Server cp's the label to that folder and I set up an inotify service on the host to watch it for changes, pushing anything that changes to the printer.