12.04 client can't print to 10.04 server network printer

[Jan Rheinländer]

I have the following setup:

Ubuntu 10.04 server

Network printer, installed on the server as hp:/net/Officejet_6500_E709n?ip=<ip>, and published by the server to the network via cups

Ubuntu 12.04 client with the cups option to show printers shared by other machines

The network printer appears as ipp://10.233.233.1:631/printers/<name>

When I print to this printer, the job fails with "Unable to add document to print job"

I found two ways to work around this:

If I install the network printer on the client directly with hp-setup it will be listed as hp:/net/Officejet_6500_E709n?ip=<ip> and printing works fine

If I turn off the option in cups to show printers shared by other machines, and use the system-config-printer "Add printer" dialog to add the printer shared by the server on the ipp14 backend, it shows up as ipp14://10.233.233.1:631/printers/<name> and printing also works fine.

But since the server does page accounting to bill the printed pages to different users, both workarounds are not an option.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: cups 1.5.3-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-29.46-generic 3.2.24
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-29-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu12
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Sep 5 16:13:42 2012
MachineType: IBM 1846AQG
Papersize: a4
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcKernelCmdLine: root=UUID=114443ca-3f50-4cab-9e1d-b7a55d718138 ro quiet resume=/dev/mapper/cswap processor.ignore_ppc=1
SourcePackage: cups
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-28 (100 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 12/06/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: IBM
dmi.bios.version: 76ET69WW (1.29 )
dmi.board.name: 1846AQG
dmi.board.vendor: IBM
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: IBM
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnIBM:bvr76ET69WW(1.29):bd12/06/2006:svnIBM:pn1846AQG:pvrThinkPadR52:rvnIBM:rn1846AQG:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 1846AQG
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad R52
dmi.sys.vendor: IBM

[Jiri Popelka (jpopelka)]

Seems similar to
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=827402#c4

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Jiri, in the Red Hat bug report you tell that you have reported the problem to CUPS upstream, can you post a link to the upstream bug report? Can you also tell what you fixed at the configuration on Red Hat's print server? Thanks.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Jan, principally, your problem only occurs if you try to access the print queue on the Ubuntu 10.04 server using the "ipp" backend on your Ubuntu 12.04 client. One way to work around it is using the "ipp14" backend. The "ipp14" backend is the "ipp" backend of CUPS 1.4.x. With the transitionto CUPS 1.5.x changes on the "ipp" backend have been done for better compliance with the IPP specs. Sinnce then, several IPP printers which are not perfectly IPP-compliant, stopped working with the "ipp" backend. These problems were reported upstream but the bug reports got rejected with the justification that the printers have bugs in their firmware. The new "ipp" backend is absolutely IPP-compliant. Therefore I have introduced the "ipp14" backend so that users can goo back to the still working CUPS-14.x IPP backend if they have one of the buggy printers.

CUPS claims to be absolutely IPP-compliant, and that in all versions, so it is strange why a CUPS server needs the "ipp14" backend on a client. Please report the problem upstream, on http://www.cups.org/str.php. Tell the CUPS versions of client and server there and that the client's original IPP backend has problems to access the server but going back to the IPP backend of CUPS 1.4.x works.