[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#235204: unreasonable timeout when CUPS server not available

[Marcel Dischinger]

Package: libcups2
Version: 1.3.11-1+b1
Severity: normal

I am experiencing the same problem. And I think I know what is causing 
it.
I have a remote server configured. The server's DNS name resolves even
on the Internet, but the cups server is only accessible from within
the corporate network.

What happens now is that when I am at home, cups resolves the DNS name
of the server (which works) and then tries to connect to the server.
However, the server is protected by a firewall and drops all requests
from external hosts (i.e., it does not answer the TCP SYN requests).
Cups waits for a very long time (minutes) until it realizes that the
connection will not happen.

So you can easily reproduce this by adding a firewall rule on your local
machine that drops all packets sent to the cups server.

It would be really helpful if this timeout to give up connection requests
to the server would be configurable - or default to a much shorter
timeout than it currently does.

Thanks,
Marcel

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libcups2 depends on:
ii  libc6                  2.9-25            GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgnutls26            2.8.3-3           the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2       1.7dfsg~beta3-1   MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - k
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-15 compression library - runtime

libcups2 recommends no packages.

Versions of packages libcups2 suggests:
ii  cups-common                   1.3.11-1   Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 

-- no debconf information