Limit printers visibility

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Futhwo <futhwo at gmail.com> wrote (Tuesday 04 July 2006 16:35):

> Hi
> I have the need to limit the visibility of shared printers anong variuos subnets; for instance when a
> client in subnet A browse the printes list he must be able to see (and eventually use) only a subset of
> our printers, while a client in subnet B must see anothe subset. I'd like to do it using only one cups
> server, and another requirement is that the client-side configuration must be the same for all the
> clients. Is it possible to do what i described?
> 
> Thanks in advance

You can't do that with the current means of CUPS 1.2. CUPS 1.2
can
 * make a printer visible or invisible -- but that is the same
   for all its clients ("/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p printername -o 
   printer-is-shared=true")
 * give or deny access to (each) printer per user or subnet 

But you can't make different subsets of its total list of printers 
visible to different groups of users.

If your clients use KDE, there is a possibility to achieve your
goal for those clients, however....


========   KDE clients ===========================================

If your clients are GUI+KDE only, you can make them "filter"
the printer list according to 

  a) manually selected choices, and/or
  b) a regular expression for the printer name or description

See "kprinter --> System Options --> Filter". After setting up
the filter list, click on the "funnel" icon/button to the right
of the printerlist dropdown in kprinter. See also the "WhatsThis"
quickhelp in kprinter's interface.

KDE also enables you to *lock* *down* this setting for each user 
with the help of its "Kiosk" mode, so that users can't change the
list of printers accessible to them. 


Cheers,
Kurt