[cups] Linux->(Linux, Windows) printer sharing with drivers on the server

[Ivan Shapovalov]

On 2016-05-20 at 14:41 +0200, Johannes Meixner wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On May 20 02:03 Ivan Shapovalov wrote (excerpt):
> > On 2016-05-19 at 18:31 +0100, Brian Potkin wrote:
> >> Ivan Shapovalov wrote:
> >>
> >>> 1. the client tries to install an HP-specific PPD
> >>>    for the discovered printer (while we want
> >>>    a generic postscript driver);
> >>
> >> Take the PPD on the server and alter the *Product line to
> >>   (Generic Postscript Printer (en))
> >>
> > It works with GNOME's system-config-printer,
> > the setup is completely automated.
> 
> Ha!
> now I seem to understand what you meant all the time
> when you talked about automated client setup.
> 
> It seems you were talking about whatever automated
> working printer setup tools that run on the client.
> 
> I do not use any such tools.
> 
> Therefore I did not understand what kind of automated
> print queue setup with strange drivers on clients
> is happening for you.

Even without such tools, the CUPS web interface _does_ preselect the
correct vendor and model when adding a local printer for which the
drivers are installed. I don't know the mechanism, but it exists and I
want to keep that behavior when adding a remote printer over dns-sd.

Even when I alter the *Product line in the PPD (as advised), only
vendor gets preselected correctly in the web interface; the model still
needs to be selected by hand.

The same holds for "default printer parameters" -- sometimes the CUPS
web interface offers A4 by default (although in most cases it's US
Letter).

> 
> It seems you are hit by this bug:
> https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=852842

No, I'm not. system-config-printer is installed.

> (excerpts,
>   therein "local host" means "client" in your case):
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> When system-config-printer-applet is installed but
> system-config-printer is not installed
> ...
> It set up a local queue using the PPD file from the
> remote queue from the remote CUPS server which means
> that the local host would do the print job filtering
> ...
> This means that in particular the printer driver must
> run on the local host which means that matching software
> that provides the printer driver must be installed
> ...
> That is contradictory to how printing to a remote
> CUPS queue should usually be done under Linux
> ...
> In contrast when system-config-printer is installed,
> the behaviour is very different
> ...
> what gets set up in the end is a local "raw" print queue
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Such issues do not belong to CUPS but to whatever other
> upstream projects that belong to those automated working
> printer setup tools.
> 
> Again:
> I do not use any such tools.
> Therefore I cannot help (frankly: I am not interested)
> in any way if there are issues with such tools.

Again, GNOME3's printer configuration was an example. Everything
applies to the native CUPS web interface as well (see above).

-- 
Ivan Shapovalov / intelfx /