[1670] in Release_7.7_team
Cost/Benefit review of lprNG
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Feb 16 13:54:38 1999
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 18:54:35 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
This is a transcript of our inventory of costs and benefits of
converting to lprNG.
lprNG Cost/Benefit
Costs:
Configuration is DIFFERENT from old lpr
Kerberized print servers don't work with new lprNG client
Administrators familiar with the old lpr administration need retraining.
Athena lpr clients before 8.2.19 would report to users some errors
with incorrect messages. (Since Mac and PC clients never tried
to be smart about error reporting, they don't have this problem.)
----
Benefits:
More robust -- stays up better.
Fewer bugs in the software.
More secure
more robust against root attack on server.
since client is not setuid, client is also more robust against root
attack.
you can send encrypted print jobs to the print server
More sophisticated approach to access control
Kerberized print servers can now ALSO have access control lists.
It becomes possible to create special Access Control Lists to permit
fine-grained off-campus print access.
Better documentation
Easier for us to support (cleaner implementation)
Active developer community. (Many lpr sites are converting to lprNG.)
Better support for HP printers incorporating more work-arounds to
observed HP problems.
Easier to add support for new printers, so we may eventually officially
support others than solely HP printers.
It becomes possible to create Kerberized SAP print support.
Audited for Year 2000 compliance. (Old lpr has had no Y2k audit.)
----
Benefits PRESERVED across the change:
Non kerberized lprNG is backward compatibile with old lpr
lprNG clients work with old non-kerberized lpr servers.
old lpr clients work fine with lprNG servers for non-kerberized printing.
It is no more difficult to learn how to administer than old lpr.
----
Investigating an lprNG daemon configuration that would just drop-in
and replace the Athena daemon. This would sacrifice some benefits
to provide an easier upgrade path. (Benefits lost: Y2k audit, some
robustness, printer configuration improvements. The old print filters
would be used instead of the new ones, and this may make a difference
in how well HP printers work.)
