Print to the reMarkable Cloud from a Fedora computer

2019 May 16

I recently picked up a reMarkable tablet and am really enjoying it! One neat thing is that it is well-integrated with a backing cloud service, so that with the right setup you can “print” from a computer straight to the reMarkable. Here’s a setup that worked for my Fedora machine. The directions are primarily derived from the remarkable-cups instructions put together by Mark Meyer.

Note: This is post-facto and is probably missing some steps.

1. Install rmapi; binaries available here.

2. Several SELinux-y steps that may be somewhat confused:

   1. Copy/move the binary to /usr/bin.
   2. Set its SELinux permissions: sudo /sbin/restorecon -v /usr/bin/rmapi.
   3. Move it to /var/spool/lpd/rmapi.
   4. We can probably just leave it in /usr/local/bin or something; note however that the driver script below hardcodes the executable path.

3. Set up the following script as /usr/lib/cups/backend/remarkable, owned by root, permissions 755 or so:

   #!/bin/bash
   #
   # Derived from:
   #
   # https://github.com/ofosos/scratch/blob/master/remarkable-cups/remarkable.sh
   
   backend="$0"
   jobid="$1"
   cupsuser="$2"
   jobtitle="$3"
   jobcopies="$4"
   joboptions="$5"
   jobfile="$6"
   
   rmapi=/var/spool/lpd/rmapi
   
   printtime="$(date +"%Y%m%d.%H%M")"
   sanitized_jobtitle="$(echo "$jobtitle" | tr / _)"
   outname=/tmp/"$sanitized_jobtitle - ${printtime}.pdf"
   
   if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then
       # this case is for "backend discovery mode"
       echo "Remarkable Printer \"Mark Meyer\" \"Backend to print directly to Remarkable cloud\""
       exit 0
   fi
   
   if [ -z "$jobfile" ] ; then
       jobfile=-
   fi
   
   cat "$jobfile" >"$outname"
   "$rmapi" put "$outname" "${DEVICE_URI#remarkable:}"
   rm "$outname"
   
   echo 1>&2
   exit 0
   

4. Follow the instructions on the remarkable-cups README to generate a remarkable.ppd file, and place it in /etc/cups/ppd. Permissions should be 0o640, owner root, and group lp.

5. Might need to restorecon the PPD and/or backend file as well.

6. Reload or restart CUPS to pick up the new configuration.

7. Add a new printer using your preferred interface. Use a device URI of remarkable:/Printouts. May need to install system-config-printer.

8. Log in to the reMarkable cloud using rmapi to generate ~/.rmapi.

9. Copy ~/.rmapi to /var/spool/lpd/.rmapi and chown to lp:lp.

10. Possible restorecon that file as well?

To update the rmapi binary (if it needs rebuilding or a bugfix), it should work just to repeat the first few steps above.

Update 2020-May-29: It seems that the most recent versions of rmapi care about the extension of the filename that you upload. I’ve modified the above script to hardcode .pdf. Maybe it needs to be smarter?