[cups] CUPS and High Availability

[Joseph Fisher]

When you create a new printer in CUPS, you have the option to "Share" the
printer.

On "slave" CUPS servers, if you check the box next to "Show printers shared
by other systems", every printer, on every CUPS server that is shared, will
appear on the slave server.

However, the slave server does not actually possess the PPD file, nor does
the print job actually occur on the slave server.

In the event that the "master" CUPS server, or the server that is sharing
the printer, goes down, you lose all printing capability to that printer.

Is there a way to fully replicate all PPD files and printer configurations
from a "master" CUPS server, to multiple "slave" CUPS servers, for a true
High Availability solution?

Of course, to be a truly HA solution, you would need to put a load balancer
in front of all CUPS servers, so that incoming print requests would print
from the next available server.

If one of the servers went down, the load balancer would automatically
route all traffic to the alternate / slave CUPS servers.

You could use an app such as "rsync" to push the PPD files to all slave
servers.

But, would you be able to import those PPD files into the local CUPS GUI?
Would you be able to automatically configure these PPD files?

If yes, what commands would I need to use, to import the full printer
definitions on each of the slave servers?

Thanks in advance, and have a great day.

jxfish2