A CUPS print server experience.

akonstam_at_trinity.edu
Date: 08/07/05

  • Next message: Mark Knights: "Update - yum -y not downloading data..." 
    Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 16:17:50 -0500
To: Fedora-List <fedora-list@redhat.com>

    I am posting this short record of my fight to configure a cups print
    server and print client over the last week, If you don't care about
    this topic just skip this message.

    The horror story started last Monday when I had configured a FC3 print
    server to allow printing to 6 HP printers. All were configured using
    the CUPS web interface using the lpd protocol. The client was
    configured using the Automatic Configuration of printers on a client
    by not doing any configuration on the client except placing the name
    of the print server in the /etc/cups/client.conf file on the client.
    It was working as far as I could tell to print text. ps. and pdf
    files.

    Tuesday at 10 am the roof fell in on my configuration. No printing
    worked from the client. Worst of every entry in the CUPS web
    interface list of printers said: To configure this printer use
    system-config-printer. Also most of the entries in the configuration
    had been destroyed, in particular, the device driver for the printers
    had been changed.

    Well the CUPS system administration document says automatic
    configuration of client printers is not supported by LPD printers. So
    why did the system work the day before. Well the documentation is old
    or in error. Automatic Configuration works for LPD printers under CUPS.
    Ok that was not the problem.

    Eventually, I found that is you set up printers using the CUPS
    web interface and then open up system-config-printer there is a good
    chance that your CUPS web configurations will be ruined. This happened
    to me three times so believe me it can happen. I would rename
    system-config-printer so it can't be executed.

    The final matter is really not a mystery but in my frustration of
    having the system self-destruct I messed up the cupsd.conf file. I
    know no one else would do the stupid things I did :-)
    The cupsd.conf file needs the following two entries made. The rest can
    be ignored most of the time:
    <Location />
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny From All
    Allow From <the address of your subnet> <-- formats given in the file.
    </Location>
    and
    Listen <name of your server> <-- formats given in the file.

    On the client client.conf should contain the line:

    ServerName myhost.domain.com <-- name of print server.

    As I said before this is the way to configure print servers and
    clients, once you understand what you are doing.

    For example, we have about 50 print clients. Now when we add a new
    printer to the server we need do nothing on the clients and printing
    will work. 

    -- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484
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