Large cups systems?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Seth Galitzer wrote:

> I'd really like to know how you keep such a large configuration stable.  
> I've got roughly a dozen printers and a couple-hundred users and the 
> whole system seems so flaky that if you sneeze too hard it falls apart. 
>  I find I have to restart the cups service almost daily to keep things 
> running.  I know my physical network is solid.  My configuration is 
> pretty simple, I'm not doing anything fancy.
> 
> So what's the secret?  More horesepower on my server?  Clustered servers? 
>  More caffene?  I can live with limited driver capability, most of my 
> users don't even notice, but the stability is a serious issue.  
> Anything, please, this is frustrating me to no end.


You wanna know what frustrates *me* sometimes?

Users who come and complain, without giving even a iota of detail about
their real problem. Users who have to be asked again and again about
some most elementary data of their setup. Users whom you have to pull
every Byte of info out of their noses, and who then never come back to
say "It worked" after they have been helped here regardless.

So what OS do you run? Which distro, which version?

What CUPS version? Ghostscript? Samba? Print client types? Which OS do
the print clients use? Which is the typical mix of print jobs, from
which applications?

What sort of printers?

What sort of errors do you see logged in the error_log file? Why is it
that you need to restart the CUPS service daily?

What is the content of your cupsd.conf file? (without comments, please;
just give us the output of 'grep -Ev "^#|^$ /etc/cups/cupsd.conf')


> Thanks.
> Seth
> 
>>> Hello Bernd,
>>>
>>> your Installation is very interesting.
>>>
>>> Where did you get your CUPS-Server?
>> We build our own RPM packages. This makes it easier to support and resolve bugs in a large environment.
>>
>>> You build it by yourself?
>> Yes.
>>
>>> Did you get maintenance from Novell
>> No.
>>
>>> Which driver are you using for your dot matrix, thermal, label,
>>> line-at-a-time.
>> Most of them use simple interface scripts with some control characters.
>>
>> For some label printers, we use real drivers:
>> http://etc.nkadesign.com/Printers/QL550LabelPrinter
>>
>>> By the way, what is a line-at-a-time printer (Zeilendrucker?).
>> A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words:
>> http://de.tallygenicom.com/products/product_tech.cfm?Technology=Line
>>
>>> I only use my 20 CUPS/Samba Server to do windowsprinting and pdf-generating.
>>>
>>> Did we need a small database for large cups installation examples or some
>>> special howtos to implement them?
>> We use a database: It is not necessary, but helpful if you want for example to add an option to all HP LaserJet printers.
>>
>> Also it helps us to log and distribute the changes to all CUPS servers.
>>
>> A very simple way:
>> *) Use a SQL script to spool out all changes
>> *) Write a shell script to use lpadmin for applying the changes
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> You need no special howtos. But you should know/understand some cups basics:
>> *) Implicit classes (failover, load balance)
>> *) Browsing
>> *) Log and configuration file(s)
>> *) Know how a job is processed and sent to the printer
>> *) File and execute permissions (spool, filter, backend)
>>
>> Optional following knowledge may be useful:
>> *) Shell scripting
>> *) Basics in Ansi-C programming language
>> *) Basic debugging technics (gdb, ...)
>>
>>
>> regards!
>> Bernd
>>

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany