Whilst you can use udev rules with any USB device, I am writing this post to help anyone else who is also having issues with their USB printer name.

The main which I had was is the printer's USB name changing when it is restarted, plugged into a different USB port or when another USB device is connected before the printer is turned on.

For example, connected to my computer is an APC USB based UPS, along with a Canon LBP6000 series USB printer. I originally installed the printer before I bought the UPS which meant the printer was configured to be found at '/dev/usb/lp0'.

However once the UPS was setup with my computer, the printer was no longer the primary device and was only accessible at '/dev/usb/lp1'. I really didn't want to go through the painful process of re-installing the printer (the LBP6000 is notorious under Linux, I had to provide some help on AskUbuntu), so instead I decided to create my own udev rule to assign a symlink from 'lp1' to 'lp0'.

Here is the rule I created:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04a9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2771", ATTRS{serial}=="0000A1E6M897", SYMLINK+="usb/lp0"

The rule basically means: on the 'add' action (when inserted) check if the device is USB and matches the 'idVendor', 'idProduct' and 'serial' values. If all of these are true a symlink which points to this device is created as 'usb/lp0'.

I stored this file within /etc/udev/rules.d/ as 99-printer.rules

To find out your devices attributes you can run these commands:

• idVendor: udevadm info -a -n /dev/usb/lp0 | grep '{idVendor}'
• idProduct: udevadm info -a -n /dev/usb/lp0 | grep '{idProduct}'
• serial: udevadm info -a -n /dev/usb/lp0 | grep '{serial}'

You can then change the udev rule to match your specific USB device, add the rule into a file with nano using this command:
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-printer.rules

Then exit and save, I also reload the udev rules with this command:
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger

Restart the computer, connect your USB printer, turn it on and see if your device name and symlink is shown within the USB directory:
sudo ls -l /dev/usb

I hope this post has been helpful. If you have issues, please post in the comments and I will try to help.