IPP printing problems on some Windows XP clients

[Laszlo Varkonyi]

Hi!

I think this is a Windows specific question, but some of you may encountered with it.

I have a bunch of Windows XP Professional clients, and on most of them, adding my printers shared by a CUPS server works great, I use the URL like this to add them in the win. printer add wizard: http://server.name:631/printers/myprintername

Then the wizard asks for username and password, I supply it, and 1 client from 10 says this: 'You do not have access to the printer, please try a different username or password'
The supplied information is correct, because it works on the other clients. Plus I wrote a program (I call it "IPP Client Monitor"), which sends the same packets to an IPP server (to CUPS) what windows would normally send to query a printer or cancel jobs etc., and with a correct username and password I can manage IPP printers from the clients the add printer wizard failed with the above.

I think that the faulty clients don't send username and password to the server, and they don't send packets at all when choosing "Use the specified user account"... (Checked with tcpdump on the server)

So what i need is:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++ How can I fix these Windows clients? +++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(The program I wrote would help if I finish it, because then i can install it on the bad clients, it listens on port 9100, and so on; and transfers RAW jobs to the CUPS server, thus allowing the clients to print)

Anyway, if You are interested in the program i wrote, then download it:
http://asztprint.inf.elte.hu/winxp.html#ippbug
This site is in Hungarian language (made by me), but don't be afraid, the only thing you need is the program, it's a few url, and you can find a screenshot there too.
The URLs for those who can't find them on the page:
------
program: http://asztprint.inf.elte.hu/downloads/IPPClientMonitor.exe
config:  http://asztprint.inf.elte.hu/downloads/printers.vli
program2: http://asztprint.inf.elte.hu/downloads/RAWtoIPP.exe
------
program2 is not ready, but i plan to finish it in a week (date today: 2005. november 10).
Don't forget to edit the necessary lines in the config file!
if there is a user= line without an username, then it will not send authentication information to the server.

It would work by the following scheme:
You start IPPClientMonitor.exe (from the Start menu's autostart folder),
it searches for the config file (currently it should be in the dir. where the .exe is, planned to be in the current users Documents folder, or read from HKEY_CURRENT_USER from registry), and if found, then parses it. When a client's "localport" is >=0 then spawns a RAWtoIPP.exe with the data of this printer (calls it to read config file xxx, printer named yyy), so it will listen on the local host's specified port, and sends it to the printer specified, with username and password (if set).
Because there is no RAWtoIPP.exe now, the only thing to You can do with it to watch other users print jobs, cancel them, stop the printer, etc.

I will write an ENGLISH version of it too, but first I need to finish it. Some texts are in english, because the server sends them, and i don't do any postprocessing.
If you are interested in it, then drop me an e-mail:
vlsoft{at sign}root.hu