Provide easy way to enable/disable printer sharing

[R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar]

I understand that "no open ports in the default installation" is Ubuntu policy,
and I find it sensible.

In Gnome, there is a setting to allow LAN printers to be detected.

In KDE, there is none, as far as I know. So in Kubuntu, I was unable to share
my CUPS printer, linked by USB to my Kubuntu PC, with another printer on my home
LAN running MEPIS Linux. Although I did achieve printer sharing by editing
/etc/cups/cupsd.conf, I think this is non-ideal.

So, I request that Kubuntu provide a clean way to share CUPS printers on a LAN
just like Ubuntu.

FYI, I did the following to enable CUPS printer sharing:
****************************
The file /etc/cups/cupsd-browsing.conf sets Browsing Off by default. This
disallows access from other PCs on the LAN.

To turn browsing on, either (sudo) edit /etc/cups/cupsd-browsing.conf and change
"Off" to "On" or go to /usr/share/cups and type

./enable_browsing 1

Then, (sudo) edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to comment out the following line so:

# Listen 127.0.0.1:631

and uncomment, as appropriate, to have these entries:

Port 631
Browsing On
BrowseAddress @LOCAL
<Location />
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From All
Allow From 127.0.0.1
Allow From @LOCAL
</Location>

Finally,

sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

and your CUPS printer should be visible from other PCs on the LAN.
****************************
Thanks.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #0)

> To turn browsing on, either (sudo) edit /etc/cups/cupsd-browsing.conf and change
> "Off" to "On" or go to /usr/share/cups and type
>
> ./enable_browsing 1

enable_browsing is an Ubuntu script that was specifically meant to be called
from GUIs. Jonathan, that's what you should call (as root, of course).

> Then, (sudo) edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to comment out the following line so:
>
> # Listen 127.0.0.1:631
>
> and uncomment, as appropriate, to have these entries:
>
> Port 631
> Browsing On
> BrowseAddress @LOCAL
> <Location />
> Order Deny,Allow
> Deny From All
> Allow From 127.0.0.1
> Allow From @LOCAL
> </Location>

That part wasn't necessary in Hoary; it was probably introduced while merging a
new Debian version into Breezy, I'll fix that.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Then, (sudo) edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to comment out the following line so:
>
> # Listen 127.0.0.1:631
>
> and uncomment, as appropriate, to have these entries:
>
> Port 631
> [...]

I checked this again, it is not a bug introduced in Breezy. enable_browsing 1 is
for making _your_ client see remote printers on the network. Above recipe is for
exporting a printer to the network on a printer server. Thus these are
completely orthogonal things. Thus for the sake of detecting LAN printers, the
KDE printer tool only needs to call enable_browsing.

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

Is this bug still here with latest packages ?

[Rocco Stanzione (trappist)]

I believe this can be fixed by moving the Browsing directive from browse.conf into cupsd.conf. The KDE interface doesn't seem to recognize the Include directive. I filed a bug on this earlier today but I can't seem to find it now.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Alright, so cupsys should provide a small script which does the configuration, similar to /usr/share/cups/enable_browsing (probably enable_sharing), and gnome-cups-manager and KDE need to integrate this into the GUI.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

in my local version, enable_browsing also enables exporting printers with Browsing (that's just how cups works).

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

gnome-cups-manager already has a GUI for enabling/disabling browsing; KDE needs to grow an equivalent, reassigning task.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

 cupsys (1.1.99.rc3-0ubuntu1) dapper; urgency=low
 .
   * New upstream bug fix release 1.2RC3, UVF exception approved by Matt
     Zimmerman.
   * Add debian/patches/56_revert_svn_5438.dpatch: Revert upstream svn commit
     5438 (fixed handling of products/manufacturers with spaces in the name)
     for now since it causes regressions in gnome-cups-add. Will be reactivated
     later when the issue is sorted out with upstream.
   * Update patches for new upstream release.
   * Remove debian/patches/20_httpGetHostname_crash.dpatch, fixed upstream.
   * Add debian/patches/14_dont_force_ssl.dpatch: Upstream now requires
     encryption by default for accessing /admin/, but our GUI frontends do not
     yet cope with that. Disable SSL requirement for now to revert to the old
     behaviour.
   * debian/patches/08_cupsd.conf.conf.d.dpatch:
     - Set "BrowseAddress @LOCAL"; without this, sending browsing information
       does not work (Browsing still has to be enabled). Since enable_browsing
       now works for exporting printers, too, this Closes: LP#17981
     - Add some comments to point out that the Port and Browsing settings are
       moved to /etc/cups/cups.d/.
   * debian/cupsys.postrm: Clean up passwd.md5 on purge.
   * debian/cupsys.init.d: Pre-create error_log, too, and clean up code a bit.
     Closes: LP#41267
   * debian/cupsys.postinst: If upgrading from Breezy, adapt the inclusion of
     external browsing configuration in cupsd.conf to retain the correct
     setting for modified cupsd.conf files.
   * debian/cupsys.config:
     - Fix handling of cupsd-browsing.conf -> cups.d/browse.conf transition for
       breezy->dapper upgrades.
     - Fix browse.conf parsing to set the correct debconf default value, so
       that the browse setting is not reset to 'off' on upgrades.
       Closes: LP#38704
   * Add debian/patches/57_svn_5461.dpatch:
     - Properly HTML-quote the printer name so that names containing e. g. '+'
       work properly in the web interface.
     - Upstream svn commit 5461.
     - Closes: LP#37018

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

There should be a "share printers to local network" checkbox on the first page of the Printer Configuration section of System Settings in Kubuntu 9.04 and up.