Groups of printers?

John A. Murdie john at cs.york.ac.uk
Mon Apr 14 02:43:15 PDT 2008


> I can see how groups of printers could be useful. However, you could
> just run different cups configurations on multiple servers.
>
> If this all needs to run on one box then I suppose virtualization is
> an option.
>
> I think groups make sense, they could make certain administrative
> tasks less complex. Although, this is a double edged sword. They also
> have to potential to make administration more complex?

Thanks for your thoughts, Henri. This matter arose in my mind because we had previously had two separate print servers, one for each (largish) group, each with a CUPS scheduler. When we moved to one print server, I arranged that we still had two CUPS schedulers, but on the same machine as you suggest above. (We do have virtual servers for other things, but it didn't seem necessary in this instance.) Only after we had moved the schedulers to the single server did I remember the facility of CUPS classes - which I've never used operationally. I'm simply inexperienced with using CUPS classes.

I'm still wondering whether classes can sensibly used only for logical grouping of printers - I should experiment. All I really want, however, is for the printers in the CUPS web page printer list to be displayed in groups - obviously I can use Unix groups to allow only certain user groups to access each printer. (Though a group access policy overridden by a particular printer's access policy would be nice.)

I think that all (!) that might be required is a tag on each XCUPS printer definition with the name of the printer group. The web 'Printers' list would show the printers grouped accordingly.

John A. Murdie




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