PaperCut Web Interface Won't Load

Your PaperCut admin interface won’t load! You’re getting some sort of error, and you’ve taken to the web to find the answer! You’ve come to the right place.

If you are a student, employee, or anyone who is not the PaperCut server administrator, we recommend that you check in with your organization’s IT support for assistance. Look for someone wearing cargo pants, maybe a subway map on their wall (Just me? Hm… ok then).

Narrowing down the problem…

Test out each of these URLs in turn to determine the cause of the issue.

Once you find out where the problem is, jump to the relevant section below for troubleshooting.

Try http://localhost:9191

To test this out, log onto the server running PaperCut, open a browser and try navigating to http://localhost:9191. If that doesn’t load or if you see an error page then get over to our article When the PaperCut Server Won’t Start.

If that URL loaded fine, then proceed to the next test.

Try http://[YourServerIP]:9191

Now that you know your PaperCut server is running, make sure that your PaperCut server is accessible over the network and that the important ports are open (9191, 9192). PaperCut will use port 9191 and 9192 for web traffic by default. We’ll want to make sure that your network firewall or the firewall software on the server is not blocking the ports that PaperCut is configured to listen on. Check out the resource below for a list of all firewall ports used by PaperCut.

To test this out open a web browser from a client on the network and try navigating to this URL: http://[YourServerIP]:9191.

If that fails to load, but the port works just fine when you access from localhost, then the IP address is not accessible or the port 9191 is blocked somewhere on your network. Please involve your network administrator for troubleshooting and share this article Firewall Ports used by NG & MF.

If that URL loaded fine, then proceed to the next test.

Try http://[YourServerName]:9191

Now you know that your PaperCut server is running, the IP address is accessible over the network, and the ports are open. So now test out the DNS name of your PaperCut server. To test this out open a web browser from a client on the network and try navigating to this URL: http://[YourServerName]:9191.

If that didn’t work, then this sounds like a DNS issue. Make sure that you have the right server hostname. Try the fully-qualified domain name (e.g. papercutserver.yourdomain.com:9191 instead of just papercutserver:9191) Make sure you have the right A record on your DNS server. Check that your workstation is configured to use the right DNS server. There are lots of things that can go wrong here, and frankly, none of them have anything to do with PaperCut. Unfortunately this is not our area of expertise (we are but simple printing folk) but your network administrator should be able to assist with this.

If that URL loaded fine, then proceed to the next test.

Try https://[YourServerName]:9192

By this point you know your PaperCut server is running, the IP address is accessible over the network, and the ports are open, and you have the right DNS name. Now let’s test out the SSL port 9192. Try navigating to https://[YourServerName]:9192.

Some things to note…

• Unless you have installed a signed certificate on your PaperCut server, you will see an error that the certificate is untrusted.
• Pay attention to any errors on this page. An error like “ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR” suggest there was a problem with the certificate that was installed.
• If the page doesn’t open at all, even when you try out https://localhost:9192 from the PaperCut server, then there most likely an issue reading the KeyStore details in the server.properties file and the PaperCut server did not start the 9192 listener.

If this didn’t load, we recommend revisiting our article Installing an SSL Certificate the Easy Way.

Try https://[YourServerName]:443

By this point you know your PaperCut server is running, the IP address is accessible over the network, and the ports are open, and you have the right DNS name, and port 9192 for HTTPS is working.

By default, PaperCut is not configured to listen on ports 80 and 443. Follow these steps to ensure PaperCut is listening on these ports: https://www.papercut.com/help/manuals/ng-mf/common/customize-enable-additional-ports/ .

Then take the network out of the equation by testing https://localhost:443.

If that still doesn’t load, then it’s probably the case that some other service on the server is using port 80 or 443 and is preventing PaperCut from listening on this port.

Sometimes the application using port 443 is a web server like IIS, or the previous Print Management app on the server. Here are some things we’ve seen that can cause this:

• World Wide Web publishing service (IIS)
• Appcore
• Windows Remote Management (WS-Management)
• Routing and Remote Access
• ASCServiceManger
• LightTPDService
• PHPService

The best way to find out what other applications are using these ports is to open PowerShell (Windows) or Terminal (macOS and Linux) and run one of the following commands to look for any application listening on port 443.

• Windows - open PowerShell as administrator and run Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 443).OwningProcess then look for any app other than pc-app.exe using this port. (The old school method was netstat -ano but it’s easier to parse the output from the equivalent PowerShell command).

• MacOS - open Terminal and run sudo lsof -nP -i$PORT | grep LISTEN | grep “443” then look for any app other than java using this port.

• Linux - open Terminal and run sudo netstat -ap | grep “443” then look for any app other than pc-app using this port.

If you identify that another application is trying to listen on the same ports as PaperCut, then please stop or remove the conflicting application and restart the PaperCut server to see if that resolves the issue.

Still have questions?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our for further assistance.