[cups] Fedora does not discover Printers

[Brett I. Holcomb]

On Sat, 2016-06-04 at 20:02 +0100, Brian Potkin wrote:
> On Sat 04 Jun 2016 at 03:24:24 -0400, Brett I. Holcomb wrote:
> 
> [...Lots of little snips...]
> 
> > 
> > What I want to do is have the client cups find the printers shared
> > by
> > the print servers on the network and allow them to be used by user
> > applications.  The problem is that the Fedora client can not see
> > the
> > server's printer except under one condition I'll cover later.  
> > 
> > * cups-browsed is deprecated so that's not an option
> Really? Have you a reputable reference for this deprecation?
in one of the many, many posts I've been reading but then there's a lot
of confusion about  cups.
> > 
> > * Some documentation says add BrowsePoll to the client cupsd.conf but
> > the logs on my systems show that as an unknown command and in the 1.16.3
> > and 2.1.3 docs it does not exist anymore so I can only assume that
> > advice is outdated
> > 

> 
> 
> Correct assumption.
> 
> 
> > 
> > * Avahi is mentioned as a necessity.  It's installed on both my systems
> > and running and started before cups. 
> > ** Is Avahi really needed to broadcast printers and discover printers
> > 

> 
> 
> For what you want to do - yes.
> 

Good.  Thanks for clarifying that.
> > 
> > in cups 1.6.3 and 2.1.3?  There is much confusing advice.  Some docs
> > say you must have it, others you don't need it.  Some people say they
> > turn it off on their servers and some leave it on so does cups need it
> > or not.
> > 

> 
> 
> These people probably had different objectives from you.
> 

Probably did not need discovery on their networks.  Some were large
companies
.
> > 
> > ** If I need Avahi how do I set it up for cups? The /etc/avahi
> > directory has only default config files with no services.
> > 

> 
> 
> Installing avahi-daemon should be sufficient. It is on Debian.
> 

Fedora and Centos have it installed and running by default also.  I'd
seen references to having to setup /etc/avahi/services files in some of
the discussions on cupls.
> > 
> > There are two ways I can get the printer to be seen on the client.
> > 
> > 1.  On the client run the printer setup app and add a printer that is
> > ipp://serverfqdn/printername and it then becomes a local printer which
> > defeats the purpose of a print server if I have to add printers
> > manually to each client.  This actually prints but I have no printer
> > options to adjust and the text is super large.
> > 2.  I can add ServerName serverfqdn:631 to /etc/cups/client.conf on the
> > client but according to cups docs that is not recommended because you
> > are allowed only one server and if it goes down there is no printing
> > and that's not acceptable to me.  The big problem with this is that if
> > I try and print from an application the printer from the server shows
> > up but the print button is grayed out.  I've tried this on several apps
> > and all have a grayed out print button so this does not work. I've
> > tried printing as root also and same thing.
> > 

> 
> 
> Neither of these meets your stated objective.
> 
> 
> > 
> > The lpr -P printername file will print but that's bypassing cups I
> > assume?
> > 
> > So how do I set cups up to have a server that serves up printers and
> > clients that simply discover the printers and let the users print to
> > them.  Anything that would help clear up the confusion would be
> > appreciated.
> > 

> 
> 
> Install avahi-daemon on server and clients. Install cups-browsed on the
> 

> clients. Read documention for cups-browsed.
> 

Did that earlier today.  In client I set BrowseAllow as all  and had to
add a Browsepoll for the server.  The server file was left as is but it
still did not work.  That let the client see the printers but the print
button was grayed out.  I finally found a bug report (https://bugs.debi
an.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=530027) in which changing ServerAlias
to * worked for some and it did for me.  Once I added that to the
server /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and restarted cups the print button was no
longer grayed out.  Based on the cups docs this is probably not a good
thing since it allows all but it works.
The server actual host name is x.sub.mydomain.net and it has a CNAME of
prtsrv1.sub.mydomain.net which is what I put in BrowsePoll.   The
server /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file has ServerName x.sub.mydomain.net and
I tried ServerAlias of prtsrv1.sub.mydomain.net and while that allows
WebUI access the cups log file complained about the client using an
invalid host and listing x.sub.mydomain.net:631 as the invalid host.
 Changing to ServerAlias * fixed that.
Now to find out why  a simple text file print gives me huge font.
Thanks for the help.
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