[cups] Authentication Problem

[Bryan Mason]

On Fri, 2020-11-20 at 09:20 -0500, Dennis Putnam wrote:
> On 11/20/2020 9:08 AM, Dennis Putnam wrote:
>> On 11/20/2020 9:02 AM, Dennis Putnam wrote:
>>> Thanks for the reply. I never would have figured that out.
>>> However, I have something strange going on. The printer name is
>>> "Epson".  When I do an 'lpstat' I get 2 printers listed (Epson-12,
>>> Epson-13) but neither is "Epson". When I look at
>>> 'system-config-printers' I see just the printer "Epson".

If you're just running "lpstat", then the two "printers" being shown
("Epson-12" and "Epson-13") are print jobs, not printers.  "lpstat"
with no parameters returns the list of active jobs queued by the
current user.

>> Here is some clarification. I get those two odd printers when I do
>> 'lpstat' as the logged in user. If I do 'sudo lpstat', nothing
>> shows up.

That's because "lpstat" returns the list of jobs queued by the user
running the "lpstat" command.  The non-root user queued the jobs, so
they show up when "lpstat" is run as the non-root user.  When "sudo
lpstat" is run, nothing shows because root hasn't queued any jobs.

>> I cannot delete those printers as 'lpadmin -x' says they
>> do not exist. Something is seriously messed up.

The printers "Epson-12" and "Epson-13" don't exist because they are
print jobs, not printers.

> Another discovery. Those printers show up because there are 2 print
> jobs in queue. I did 'lprm' and now everything looks right except
> there is no Epson printer (lpstat) either as user or with sudo.  I
> see now that 'lpstat' does not list printers but rather print jobs.

The "lpstat" command does both it's a bit of a Swiss Army knife when
it comes to extracting status from CUPS.  "lpstat" will show jobs.
"lpstat -p" will show the printers.  You can run "man lpstat" to see
all the different things that "lpstat" can do.

> In any case print jobs are still being held for authentication.

That could be because the Windows print server isn't configured to
accept anonymous print jobs.

~ Bryan