[cups.general] Restricting browsable printers

[Helge Blischke]

John Morton wrote:
> 
> I'm looking at using the cups printer browsing/directory service system
> to enable various branches of my organisation (on different subnets) to
> print to each other's invoice printers. I expect the topology to look a
> little like this:
> 
>  - Each branch LAN will have client machines with printers and
>  a server with printers, and every cups server will know about
>  the local printers via broadcast on a 30 second interval. The
>  main server's cups instance will also relay any printer information
>  it recieves from the WAN.
> 
>  - A central cups server will poll each of the branch servers for
>  information about their local printers, and will relay this
>  information to all the other branches.
> 
> The problem with this model is that 100 branches with an average of four
> printers each will result in the central cups server sending
> out a half meg of browse data to each of a hundread servers, each over
> 256k pipes. Even if it polled and relayed once a night, it would still
> add up to a lot of traffic.
> 
> I'd like to be able to configure each of the branch servers to only
> expose one printer to the central polling server, however it looks as
> though the browsing code is uninterested in using access control to
> printers as a means of deciding if some other server should see a given
> printer at all.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> John Morton

I guess you will have to wait for CUPS 1.2 and see if the printer
sharing/export
directives it will support matches your needs.

Helge

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de