[cups.general] How do I publish a printer

[Helge Blischke]

Johannes Meixner wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> On Jan 16 08:06 H.Blischke wrote (shortened):
>>> I am configuring a server with SuSE-Linux 11.2
>>> to be used as as a server in an Apple Network.
>>> File sharing via AFP oder netatalk is working fine.
>>> But: The printer directly connected via USB to the server
>>> seems not to be published.
> 
> I don't know about Apple OS 9.2.
> 
> I assume that the usual "CUPS Browsing" ( i.e. CUPS server cupsd
> sends information about his print queues to the network which
> is picked up by listening cupsds on the client machines,
> see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell )
> is not supported by Apple OS 9.2.
> 
> In this case it would be useless to publish a print queue
> on the CUPS server because there are no listeners running on
> Apple OS 9.2 which would pick up the "CUPS Browsing"
> information from the server.
> 
>>> The printer is a HP PSC. It prints perfectly from the
>>> server directly, but my Apple G3 with OS 9.2 does not
>>> show me the printer.
>>> Is this an error while configuring cups or papd or
>>> is my G3 with OS 9.2 simply not ready to work accordingly?
>>
>> See
>> http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/2.1/htmldocs/configuration.html#printing
>> especially the "cupsautoadd" parameter.
> 
> If it doesn't work via "cupsautoadd" (regardless what the cause is)
> you could try to fall back to the traditional method and submit
> the print jobs from the Apple OS 9.2 clients via LPD protocol
> to the CUPS server.
> 
> On the CUPS server the cups-lpd (the daemon that accepts data
> via LPD for CUPS) must run. The cups-lpd is started via xinetd.
> For additional information see "man cups-lpd" and
> http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell
> 
> 
> Additionally you may have a look at
> http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Printing_from_Windows_to_Linux
> to get some basic ideas and some analogy regarding
> how to send print jobs from an operating system
> without built-in CUPS support to a CUPS server
> and how to print documents in proprietary formats
> (e.g. from whatever proprietary office applications)
> from proprietary operating systems to a CUPS server.
> 
> 
> Kind Regards
> Johannes Meixner

I think I should try to throw some light on this topic:

(1) CUPS is based on TCP/UDP, HTTP, IPP for all communication it does.
(2) AppleTalk (which PAP is a part of, such as AFP, the Apple Filing 
Protocol), has a totally different architecture.

An implication of this is that CUPS browsing (regardless of the configured 
browsing protocol) does not work on an AppleTalk network.

On the other hand, AppleTalk has its own protocol to advertize shared 
objects (such as shared volumes, printers, and applications).

This said, it has been a feature of Netatalk from the beginning to advertize 
shared printers and volumes (configured as shared objects via the netatalk 
administration/configuration) over the AppleTalk network.

>From the papd manpage:

papd can also pipe the print job to an external program for processing, and 
this is the preferred method on systems not using CUPS to avoid 
compatibility problems with all the flavours of lpd in use.

As of version 2.0, CUPS is also supported. Simply using cupsautoadd as first 
papd.conf entry will share all CUPS printers automagically using the PPD 
files configured in CUPS. It ist still possible to overwrite these defaults 
by individually define printer shares. See papd.conf(5) for details.

If you - the OP - are using a Netatalk Version less than 2.0, you need to 
either configure the printers "by hand" in your papd.conf or write a script 
that periodically queries the cups server and reconfigures the papd daemon 
if needed (sigh!).

Helge