SNMP printer discovery documentation?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

John A. Murdie <john at cs.york.ac.uk> wrote (Wednesday 26 July 2006 18:10):

>> What is the output if you run /usr/lib/cups/backend/snmp from the
>> command line?
> 
> Pretty much as expected - I've been reading Article #387.
> 
>> Could it be that your distro (Debian?) has no "snmp" in your backend
>> directory (and disabled it by putting it into a "backend-available"
>> one)?
> 
> It has snmp there, readable and executable by root except when I've
> experimented by chmod-ing it 000 to prevent 40 minute delays starting 
> admin.cgi. Also, I'm using Solaris.
> 
>> What's the content of your /etc/cups/snmp.conf file (sans the
>> comments)?
> 
> I've not created this file - all my printers have an SNMP read-only 
> community name of "public" - though I've changed their read-write 
> and trap community names. 
> 
>> What are the IP addresses of printers which you expect to discover
>> (and are not yet installed on the system)?
> 
> There's just one of these, an HP Colour LaserJet 4500N.

Well, if one printer is already installed with the same IP address
as that device (which I assume it is), the web interface will *not*
display that printer and will *not* offer the "Add This Printer"-
button for it. 

However, the snmp backend run from the *commandline* will still 
list it...

To see how auto-discovery works, you'll have to temporarily de-
install that printer   :-)


> I don't think that is relevant, the printer has worked fine for 
> many years, and backend/snmp reports it sensibly. It's firewalled 
> from the outside world, so that information is of no use to you. 

Heh...

I had not intended to send you a print job :-)  Nor do even more
evil things to it  :-)

> What would you have looked for? 

I'd just have checked if they are in the same subnet, if netmasks
match etc. (However, if commandline snmp works that should be a
given).

snmp broadcasts will not work across routers or gateways into the
neighboring subnets... (However, when I made my snmp.conf file
really large by enumerating each single IP address of another
subnet [256 addresses], auto-discovery indeed did come back with 
42 network printers over there, albeit very slow [2 minutes, 10 
seconds] -- I'll file a bug report about it, once I collected 
some more debugging info...)

>> What is the output of "ifconfig" on your system?
> 
> It's as expected. What would you have looked for?

See above  :-)

Cheers,
Kurt