[Solved - of sorts] CUPS printing problems

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Mon Apr 24 00:39:12 UTC 2006


On Sunday 23 April 2006 20:14, Craig White wrote:
>On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 19:12 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 23 April 2006 16:31, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> >On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 05:24 -0700, Rickey Moore wrote:
>> >> Anne Wilson <cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>         On Saturday 22 April 2006 03:55, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> >>         > I can confirm that I was forced to make changes in
>> >>
>> >>         cupsd.conf by hand to
>> >>
>> >>         > allow any thing but the localhost to print to my
>> >>         > printers by
>> >>
>> >>         cups.
>> >>
>> >>         > Once I set the browse option to allow the other
>> >>         > machines to
>> >>
>> >>         see the
>> >>
>> >>         > printers, and then set the Allow From option to allow
>> >>         > the
>> >>
>> >>         local network
>> >>
>> >>         > to connect I am able to print from other machines on my
>> >>
>> >>         local network.
>> >>
>> >>         > It seems the cups web interface only is designed to
>> >>
>> >>         configure local
>> >>
>> >>         > printing and has no options to set things to allow
>> >>         > anything
>> >>
>> >>         else on the
>> >>
>> >>         > LAN to use the printer.
>> >>         >
>> >>         > This is definitely something that needs to be improved
>> >>         > to
>> >>
>> >>         allow new or
>> >>
>> >>         > non-technical users to configure printers for network
>> >>         > use,
>> >>
>> >>         not just on
>> >>
>> >>         > the localhost.
>> >>
>> >>         Intrigued by this thread, since I use networked printing
>> >> all the time, I tried
>> >>         to use the cups interface on this box to add another
>> >>         configuration of my
>> >>         printer. It appeared to complete, telling me that it had
>> >> added the printer.
>> >>         Checking on the server, I found that no new printer had
>> >> been added there.
>> >>         Wondering if it had merely set up a local configuration
>> >> to be piped through,
>> >>         I decided to try a test print of a photo. The new printer
>> >>         didn't show up on
>> >>         the printer list. Then I tried to print a test page, and
>> >> got the message
>> >>         that the target printer doesn't exist.
>> >> Way back in 2000, when I worked at RH, I had to come in from the
>> >> cold and admit that I couldn't get my GF's printer to work at
>> >> all. Toxic SHAME!! I brought the entire system to work, and no
>> >> one else could get it to work, and they were the REAL experts!! I
>> >> finally rpm -e'd samba. God only knows why or how that came to me
>> >> to do so... and then the printer worked. I had beat myself up for
>> >> over a -year-, and had come to the conclusion that there was
>> >> something fundementaly wrong with me / linux / my system and it
>> >> was Samba, all along.
>> >>
>> >> So, you might wish to check out your printer running locally
>> >> first, then jump into the networking end. Your message indicates
>> >> it works OK on localhost. That's good. Beat on your samba
>> >> settings, that's most likely where your permission problem lies. 
>> >> I still shudder to think about the hell I went through with
>> >> emails and postings all over the place just to locally print a
>> >> page. <shudders> Ric
>> >
>> >Great idea and I certainly would consider it if I was using samba.
>> >However, none of my machines have ever had samba
>> > enabled/configured. My network is pure Linux so the samba realm is
>> > not needed.
>>
>> And I've been using Samba for about 7 years, but never as a printer
>> server, none, nada.  Cups and ipp have worked for all printer
>> sharing and nearly always have.  No local configuration required
>> other than to look at localhost:631, wait for it to find all the
>> servers printers and quit.  From that point on, anything I print
>> brings up a requester to check if I want to use the default printer,
>> I click ok, and a wee bit later I have inky paper on the output
>> tray.  And we're being told that should be all thats required if the
>> printer is attached to a machine on the same subnet.
>>
>> So my advice is not to get rid of samba, but to take any and all
>> references to the printers out of /etc/samba/smb.conf, on all
>> machines, then restart samba and see if that helps.
>
>----
>rather curious advice from someone who uses smbfs instead of nfs to
>share files between Linux systems.

Chuckle, but be carefull how hard you throw those brickbats.  Here, I 
was never able to make NFS work until kernel 2.6.16, when it suddenly 
seemed to be functional.  I'd brought my error messages and NFS 
failures to this list intermittently now for several years, and no one 
was ever able to walk me thru to a working system till now.  The errors 
I was seeing simply didn't make sense to most and they, not knowing the 
answer, simply ignored it after a while cause it worked for THEM while 
I was out in the middle of the creek without a paddle.

So my file sharing here has always been either samba or rsync driven.  
And since samba Just Works(TM) the perceived lack of speed hasn't been 
a very large consideration based as much on the premise that I don't 
fix what ain't broken.  What perms samba can manage to fubar I can 
always fix if they become a problem.

>Samba automatically gets/shares cups printers with only minor
>adjustments to smb.conf on the cups/samba server. I find using
>Windows/Samba based shared printers easier to use than cups shared
>printer but I can do either. Samba configuration on a system
> attempting to use a remote Windows/Samba based printer is not
> meaningful.

FWIW, it may not be workable on winderz either, and frankly I haven't 
checked to see if winderz can see one of the cups/ipp printers on this 
subnet.  If I was going to actually run winderz (spit) then it might be 
a consideration.  But that will only happen if fc5 breaks itself & I'm 
out of reach of the repair disks. Not likely since they are in the cd 
case in the lappy's carry case already.

>Craig

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.




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