[cups] A primer on CUPS and printers

[Jörg Thümmler]

Am 02.03.21 um 23:19 schrieb Johnnie W Adams:
> Thanks! This was super helpful.
> 
> The one big change from 1.3 to 1.6 which still puzzles me is the relation
> between cupsd.conf and cups-files.conf. There are Location directives in
> both. Is this just a convenience thing? Could it (in theory) all go in
> cupsd.conf? Or is there a way of specifying which goes where? If both files
> have a Location directive for the same location, which one controls the
> operations?
> 
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 12:57 AM Jörg Thümmler <listen at vordruckleitverlag.de>
> wrote:
> 
>> Am 01.03.21 um 17:54 schrieb Johnnie W Adams:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>        This is all super helpful!
>>>
>>>        My specific problem right now is going from the old 1.3.7 version
>> to
>>> the new 1.6.3 version as I move from one machine to another. (I can't go
>> to
>>> a 2.x version for a while.) I am having extreme trouble getting
>>> authentication working. I've yet to see a pop-up box for it. I normally
>> get
>>> a login box when I configure a printer on the old 1.3.7 version; on the
>> new
>>> one, I just get Forbidden. I'm not seeing a difference in cupsd.conf that
>>> explains it, either.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>        John A
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 9:52 AM Jörg Thümmler <
>> listen at vordruckleitverlag.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Am 18.02.21 um 15:14 schrieb Johnnie W Adams:
>>>>> Hi, folks,
>>>>>
>>>>>         I spent the first ten years of my time as a UNIX/Linux admin
>>>> working
>>>>> with very large systems that didn't use printers.
>>>>>
>>>>>         Now I do manage printers, and am finding it much rougher going
>>>> than i
>>>>> had expected. I'm right now working on moving CUPS and a couple hundred
>>>>> printers from a very old version of Linux to a new one. (RHEL 5 to RHEL
>>>> 7,
>>>>> and no, it was not my idea to let that old RHEL 5 machine live this
>>>> long.)
>>>>> I get the pieces, but I  don't yet have an overview of what I'm doing.
>>>>>
>>>>>         Can someone recommend a primer or a reading path through the
>> CUPS
>>>>> documentation?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>>         John A
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> you might have seen, the localhost:631 website has quite good references
>>>> for the configs. Mostly you don't need that more.
>>>>
>>>> Apples view on this you can find here:
>>>> https://opensource.apple.com/source/cups/cups-30/doc/sam.pdf
>>>>
>>>> There will be more in the www, but usually, if you don't have to manage
>>>> very special things, this is enough. If your users use modern software,
>>>> as office, webbrowser, mailer using a graphical desktop, printing will
>>>> be done as in window$.
>>>> Other software (if without own special drivers) should put out
>>>> postscript, which cups converts into the printer language, the used
>>>> printer understands. Usually the "lpr" command is used this way.
>>>> And you can write own "drivers"  and pipe the data to an "raw" printer,
>>>> which just sends the data without conversion to the used printer by
>> "lpr".
>>>> If you have simple txt data, you can use "enscript" to generate ps from
>>>> that.
>>>> A thing i often use as a shortcut for programming graphic output from
>>>> data without complex office stuff is: producing html output, then
>>>> converting in pdf by "wkhtmltopdf" and then converting to ps by "pdf2ps"
>>>> and then sending as ps to a ps printer. Sounds strange, but is fast and
>>>> good quality...
>>>>
>>>> hth - feel free to ask further...
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> cu
>>>>
>>>> jth
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> cups mailing list
>>>> cups at cups.org
>>>> https://lists.cups.org/mailman/listinfo/cups
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> below is an old cups.conf (1.3.9) allowing mostly anything from anywhere
>> in the LAN. You may use that for starting with a very "open" cups and
>> secure it later...
>>
>> --
>> cu
>>
>> jth
>>
>> -------------cups.conf ------------------
...
> 

Hi,

my cups 1.3.9 has no cups-files.conf. My cups 2.x has, but there are 
only file location definitions, as where the logs e.g. are situated 
physically. No <...> tags with limitations or something of that kind.

I would try to get an fresh cups-files.conf for your cups version, try 
to install it on a test machine and take it from this. I never changed 
this file...

-- 
cu

jth