[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#429715: Bug#429715: "Using Debian to print to a remote Debian CUPS server is dang hard"

[Martin-Éric Racine]

On 6/26/07, Kurt Pfeifle <k1pfeifle at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Package: cupsys-client
> > Version: 1.2.11-3
> > Severity: important
> >
> > My friend gave me the IPP URL of his printer.  Not knowing much about
> > this newfangled protocol, I installed cupsys-client, thinking (based on
> > the package description) it would be a cinch to access the printer.  It
> > turned out to be an ordeal.
>
> Are you sure your friend had setup his CUPS in a way that allows remote
> CUPS clients to use his printqueues?!?
>
> Because by default, Debian will not setup CUPS to allow this.

Simply enabling the "Share published printers connected to this
system" option on the remote CUPS server makes them visible to
connecting clients.

Then, it's just a matter of adding one line in /etc/cups/client.conf
on the client host:

ServerName cupsserver.localnet

In the above case, cupsserver.localnet is where the remote CUPS server
is located. Once that line is added and browsing enabled on the remote
CUPS server, I can use lpstat without the -h option, which gives me
this:

$ LC_ALL=C lpstat -p
printer CUPS-PDF is idle.  enabled since Thu May 24 12:34:41 2007
printer laser is idle.  enabled since Sun Dec 10 18:13:03 2006

Both printers in the above example reside on the remote server
cupsserver.localnet; simply defining that server in the configuration
file and enabling browsing on the remote is all that was needed.

Btw, the current default is not entirely useless:

When setting up a Samba server in combination with CUPS, Samba will
import any printer offered by the local CUPS and make them available.
Of course, they won't show on the IPP port unless you enable browsing
as above, but they will still be available via Samba by default.

The same logic follows as to why we packaged support for the old BSD
queue (port 515) separately, as a part of cupsys-bsd rather than in
the default cupsys package: Samba offers every printer it imports from
CUPS.

Anyhow, it seems that a simple mention in the README.Debian about how
to enable browsing, before configuring a cupsys-client, would solve
this bug quite nicely.

-- 
Martin-Éric Racine
http://q-funk.iki.fi