[cups.general] How to disable printers cache (/var/cache/cups/remote.cache)

[Thomas Stocker]

Hi List


In short: How to diable global printer definitions (/etc/cups/printers.conf) and disabling printers caching (/var/cache/cups/remote.cache) You'll understand if I explain why.

We have the following scenario, I have 2 questions about.

We're bound to a CUPS version whicht doesn't have the grouping features yet, in facht we're bount to available OpenSolaris and Solaris 10 versions. Its a Sunray installation (SRSS, a thinclient concept) with about 1000 users and 300 printers.

We have a /etc/printers.conf which counts > 2400 lines, so the printer list for all users is way too long.
No we've written scripts based on the followme printing script on [1] that parse /etc/cups/printers.conf and put the appropriate printers by location into $HOME/.printers triggered by the utaction script. (event, if an user logs in). So far, so good.

After a user is logged in, he has a proper $HOME/.printers file. But we need to get rid of the /var/cache/cups/remote.cache file, and the global /etc/cups/printers.conf file, or a way to tell the system to disobey the global /etc/printers.conf contents.

removing the cache file from hand or script and restarting the service is not an option, remeber, thinclient environment. We simply cannot restart the service on each users login.

The /etc/cups/printers.conf problem is now covered by a cronjob which checks for changes in the file via md5hash and - if changed - parses the printers.conf an put the content in the appropriate $HOME/.printers script. It would be way better if we can say system shall ignore global printers configuration.

The real problem is so far to disable printers caching. I just tought to set the immutable flag to this file /var/cache/cups/remote.cache, this should work ..!??

How to achieve that? We could just use LP instead, but user wishes to have 2 redundant CUPS servers..

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Tom Stocker

[1] http://wiki.sun-rays.org/index.php/SRSS_Addon:_Follow_Me_Printing