Ron Stodden wrote:
>
> To Till Kamppeter,
>
> Re CUPS.
>
> I have two machines on a LAN, say called 'one' and 'two'. One has a
> deskjet 970cxi attached to the parallel port. Two is a gateway
> machine to the internet with two NICs.
>
> One may be running either Mandrake 7.2, fully updated, or Windows 98
> SE.
>
> Two runs either 7.2, fully updated, or today's Cooker and has no
> local printer.
>
> Two therefore has Kups set up with two printers, a remote CUPS
> printer, and an SMB remote printer. Properly, kups on two comes up
> with one printer disabled, which one depending which OS is running on
> one.
>
> Kups Bug: On two, running Cooker, with the SMB printer disabled in
> kups, kups keeps producing a modal dialog box every few seconds
> stating that the printer (does not say which printer) is
> inacessible. When this modal box is up, kups itself is inaccesible.
> Surely when a printer is marked as disabled, kups should not be
> trying to access it? Also, the dbox should not be modal, so that
> other printers can be used.
>
This bug is known, shows up sometimes, and when one restart kups the
dialogs disappear in most cases.
> Xpp Bug: On two, running 7.2, xpp seems to be keeping its own
> independent history of all printers that have ever been connected to
> this machine, and dutifully produces all these printers listed in its
> window with no right click option to remove a printer. Surely, like
> kups, it should only use the printers broadcast to it by the printer
> servers?
>
XPP is a printing frontend, it has no administration options (as
removing printers). The issue you have seen applies to the printer lists
of all frontends (XPP, QtCUPS, KUPS, lpstat), the list is generated by
the CUPS library. Unfortunately, it contains disabled, but existing
printer queues, and also entries which are only in ~/.lpoptions or
/etc/cups/lpoptions but do not exist on any server any more. Edit this
files and remove all obsolete entries from them. Start the frontend
again and you will have only two queues (one active depending on the
server's OS) left.
> Further, xpp makes an incorrect default printer selection (the
> bullet). Surely it should NEVER select an inaccessible printer as
> the default printer?
The problem is that you can define a default printer by clicking on
"Options" and then "This printer as default", but this is static and
does not follow the OS change on the server. I think the CUPS authors
thought only about corporate networks and there are normally no
dual-boot machines. A solution would be the following:
Define a class containing the two queues (remote CUPS, SMB). Define this
class as your default printer. A print job sent to a class is treated by
the first printer responding. And because in your case there is only one
printer queue which can respond, the correct queue is chosen
automatically. The class you define with kups or the web interface, you
make it the default with XPP ("Options", "This printer as default").
Till
