[cups.bugs] [HIGH] STR #1443: cupsaddsmb -h <foreign-cups-server> does not work => cupsaddsmb: No PPD file for printer "infoa" - skipping!

[Alain Knaff]

[STR New]

When attempting to use cupsaddsmb with a non-local cups server (i.e. cups
server running on another machine), it bails out with a very cryptic error
message:

cupsaddsmb: No PPD file for printer "infoa" - skipping!

This happens when using the -h option to redirect it to another cups
server. Oddly enough, it also happens when I try to get "smart" and use a
redirector program instead...

It happens with both SuSE 10.0, SuSE 9.3 and Debian clients (and SuSE 9.3
servers)

N.B. the SuSE 9.3 client had a full cups installation (... and is actually
used as a cups server most of the time). But that shouldn't matter
anyways: strace shows no sign of reading local ppd files, neither for
successful operations nor for unsuccessful ones.

Google turned up lots of reports of other people having similar problems,
but no solutions unfortunately. However most seemed to agree that
cupsaddsmb's error messages are indeed rather cryptic and often
misleading.

I've got cups-1.1.23-7.2 on the SuSE 9.3 client, cups-1.1.23-21.2 on the
SuSE 10.0 client, 1.1.23-10 on Debian, and cups-1.1.23-7 on the SuSE-9.3
server

So what kind of "secret handshake" is involved here? It's neither direct
access of cups files (fails as well if client has full installation), nor
IP based (fails as well if a redirector makes both client and server
believe that they are localhost to each other...). Could be language
settings (en vs en-us, utf-8 vs iso-8859-1), but had no way of checking
this, as cupsaddsmb seems to ignore what is written in
/etc/cups/cupsd.conf and getting its settings from someplace else...

Oh, and why aren't there any meaningful messages in the cups log, not even
with debug2?

Please don't tell me that it's the distributors' fault (that would be
*both* Debian and SuSE in this case, I guess...) without supplying me with
an URL where I can download a *working* cupsaddsmb from. If for some
reason you can't publish such an URL, don't hesitate to send it to me
privately.

Thanks

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1443
Version: 1.1.23rc1