[7748] in testers
Re: Athena 10 printing/configuring a local CUPS printer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jdreed@MIT.EDU)
Sat Oct 18 12:49:25 2008
Message-ID: <20081018124902.mlrxwni2g60cs4s4@webmail.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:49:02 -0400
From: jdreed@MIT.EDU
To: Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>
Cc: Alex T Prengel <alexp@mit.edu>, testers@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <48FA0CD8.7000405@mit.edu>
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That is correct, the klpr:// URI relies on a custom klpr backend. Mine was
essentially a Perl script that ran LPRng's lpr on the job and dealt with
tickets.
The problem has always been ticket passing between the user and the backend
processes. On OS X, this is accomplished via a custom print dialog
extension -
unfortunately, there's no such mechanism on Linux (that I know of).
One option which has been brought up from time to time is issuing keytabs to
machines for backend authentication to the LPD servers, but that has a number
of logistical and security implications.
I considered implementing Kerberized printing in a similar way on Linux (RHEL,
specifically), but the issue is that the GUI utilities (including the CUPS
webserver on localhost) do a terrible job of handling non-standard backends,
despite backend extensibility being the whole point of CUPS. </rant>
So, I mean, we could revisit this, but really, the world is pretty much done
with LPR printing, and effort might be better spent on making CUPS suck less.
-Jon
Quoting Evan Broder <broder@MIT.EDU>:
> A klpr:// style URI won't work - that's not a URI backend that's
> included by default, and is probably related to jdreed's
> LPRng-for-OS-X software, and in general there's currently no way to
> do authenticated printing through CUPS.
>
> It looks like there's an IP ACL in place for hero-p, according to the
> output from chpcheck, which would restrict jobs from coming in from
> anywhere but the print servers.
>
> The URI you want to try adding is <lpd://husq.mit.edu/hero>.
>
> - Evan
>
> Alex T Prengel wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm trying to understand Athena 10 printing problems, and in the
>> process of doing this I'm trying to configure a local printer, which
>> I'm so far unable to do successfully. I believe if I can do this I'll
>> be able to get a local printer option to appear in many application
>> printer dialogs which currently only offer me a choice of one of the
>> predefined public printers around campus.
>>
>> I also want to try various edits to printer entries in
>> /etc/cups/printers.conf
>> which various people claim fix Java printing. At the moment this file only
>> has an entry for a printer "PDF", presumably because no local printers are
>> configured.
>>
>> I've tried using system-config-printer, and I can get it to set up a
>> local printer for me which it finds on the network, but when I try to
>> print a test page to it (from system-config-printer) nothing prints,
>> nor do I get any printout when I try to print to it from various
>> applications (like Matlab and Open Office), even though the printer
>> appears in the printer pick list. I didn't forget to stop and restart the
>> CUPS server in case that matters. There's no obvious error message.
>>
>> I may not be configuring things correctly as I know little about CUPS
>> printing. The device URI that system-config-printer generated was:
>>
>> hp:/net/HP_Color_LaserJet_3800?ip=18.152.0.62
>>
>> (the IP address is correct). I have no idea if it's supposed to look like
>> this or not; if anyone can help I'd much appreciate it. I used google-mit
>> to look for other /etc/cups/printers.conf files, and most had URIs in
>> another format. I tried to edit mine to look like those (for example
>> DeviceURI klpr://hesiod/acantha), but that didn't help (my printer uses
>> kerb5 authentication per the pcap entry).
>>
>>
>> Alex
>>
>
