[FFE] Reimplement automatic appearing of CUPS queues broadcasted by a remote CUPS server
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
cups (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Till Kamppeter | ||
Quantal |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Till Kamppeter | ||
Raring |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Till Kamppeter | ||
cups-filters (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Till Kamppeter | ||
Quantal |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Raring |
Fix Released
|
Critical
|
Till Kamppeter |
Bug Description
Feature Freeze Exception request for Quantal
Original report:
Since cups 1.6+, cups browsing protocol and automatic appearing of remote CUPS queues doesn't work anymore (LP: #1052897).
This is a serious regression because each user has to :
- manually add each queue of interest at every site (as printers don't appear automagically anymore)
- keep a big list of non existing printers when moving (as printers don't disappear automagically anymore)
The local cups server (or another daemon) should have a mean to automatically add discovered printers (like it does for USB printers for example).
Rationale:
The feature of CUPS servers broadcasting their print queue info into the local network and CUPS clients automatically picking up these broadcasts and making the queues immediately available and so the client always automatically having the print queues of the network where it is actually connected is unique to Linux and makes users prefer Linux against Windows or Mac.
Clients are absolutely configuration-less. They simply pick up the queues in the network. Roaming with a laptop between different networks (home, office) always shows the printers actually available.
In addition, it is very easy to set up high availability. Create equally-named queues on more than one server (preferably with the same printer model and configuration) and on clients only one queue (an implicit class) with this name appears and jobs get load-balanced between the servers and the queue stays alive if a part of the servers is down.
As all this is done by CUPS itself, it works with all desktop applications and on the command line. No special code in the print dialogs is needed.
CUPS 1.6.x dropped this feature, replacing CUPS' own broadcasting/
Proposed fix:
In the package cups 1.6.1-0ubuntu10 I have forward-ported the removed CUPS broadcasting/
- It contains only code which worked well for several years in CUPS
- The patch does not interfere with any changes on CUPS which were done after the removal of the CUPS Broadcasting/
- It does not remove anything from the current code and also does not modify anything of the already existing functionality (like Bonjour broadcasting/
- I have tested it on 2 computers, one 64-bit with 17 queues and one 32-bit with one queue, having an additional Precise (CUPS 1.5.3) box in the network (~15 queues). All broadcast and receive their queues correctly and all network printing works. Equally named queues form implicit classes as expected. Left everything running over night and no crash reports in the morning (patch for bug 1041013 is also applied).
- Consumers of libcups, especially GTK work without problems, so no other packages need to get rebuilt.
- Eliminates the need to do changes on several GUI toolkit and application packages.
- All bug fixes of 1.6.1 and after are preserved (in contrary to a downgrade to CUPS 1.5.x).
Additional notes:
We will not carry this large patch permanently. It is only until the GUI toolkits and print dialogs are able to discover Bonjour-broadcasted print queues and so configuration-less clients are possible without classic CUPS Broadcasting/
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: cups 1.6.1-0ubuntu9
[ Automatically added info not relevant for this problem removed ]
Changed in cups (Ubuntu): | |
importance: | Undecided → High |
milestone: | none → ubuntu-12.10 |
summary: |
- Reimplement automatic appearing of remote CUPS queues brodcasted by DNS- - SD/Bonjour + Reimplement automatic appearing of remote CUPS queues broadcasted by + DNS-SD/Bonjour |
Changed in cups (Ubuntu): | |
assignee: | nobody → Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) |
importance: | High → Critical |
status: | Confirmed → In Progress |
summary: |
- Reimplement automatic appearing of remote CUPS queues broadcasted by - DNS-SD/Bonjour + [FFE] Reimplement automatic appearing of CUPS queues broadcasted by a + remote CUPS server |
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
description: | updated |
Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.