5 thoughts on - Cups Freeze When Remote Server Is Unavailable

• I don’t see that this is a bug.

  In client.conf you’re telling it which server to use, exclusively. You’re not adding remote printers, you’re telling it which CUPS server to talk to everytime you use CUPS clients commands. You don’t even need to run a local CUPS server if you configure it like this.

  If you want a machine to work at both ends, I’d suggest you don’t do this, and instead run a local CUPS server, and add remote printers to that local server.

  jh

• Hi John

  thanks for your quick reply. If it is not a bug, as I was reading on the web, it is some misunderstanding from me. Running cups 1.4.2 (CentOS6) I was using the “BrowsePoll” directive in cupsd.conf. So the printers were automatically known from the central server of the lab. And home printers were working fine with this setup too. In CentOS7, with cups 1.6.3, this directive does not exist any more and reading the doc I had understood that it was replaced by the client.conf file. Reading your answer suggest it is not true.

  So could you tell me or suggest reading on the right manner to reproduce my previous CentOS6 setup ?

  Sorry for this newbie question, I’m not very familiar with cups setup.

  Patrick

  Le 29/10/2018

• Hi,

  John tries to tell you:
  Revert your configuration changes to the config file and use the local web interface / lp* / GUI Print Server Configuration tool to setup all printers at work and / or at home using these tools.

  This method needs a local cups instance that works if your OS is running (if a printer is not reachable for printing cups can still keep the job in it’s queue until the printer is reachable). You can find an linux.com article on Printer Setups in [1] (mainly selected for its screenshots of cups web interface and not for its actuality) which should give you all information’s to get it work.

  At least for desktop setups cups should be running by default, see
  “systemctl status cups” to check if it’s running.

  For a more in-depth view on cups I can recommend reading the archwiki
  [2].

  best regards Markus

  [1] https://www.linux.com/learn/linux-101-printing
  [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS

• Hi Lange,

  thanks for these links. Following John reply I goes back and deeper in looking for documentation. Using the web interface is not an option as I
  have many laptops to set up and they are all automatically
  (re)installable from a PXE boot + kickstart in case of trouble. So all must be setup automatically (using command lines in the kickstart file)
  and user must be allowed to add their own home printer.

  I understand some things this afternoon, discover cups-browsed that was not available in 1.4 version (CentOS6), understand why it was not working (the laboratory cups version was 1.4 on a debian server and CentOS7 has 1.6.x now) discover also that ppd files are deprecated in newer cups version (> 2.x ?)….

  Time is to go deeper in all these documentations and build a scenario to set up cups in these automatic installations process. I agree, it was not a bug, just misunderstanding new cups software behaviour.

  Patrick

  Le 29/10/2018 à 17:15, Lange, Markus a écrit :

• Hi Patrick,

  you can install your lab printers using the lp* / cups* commands in your ks file or using scripts, see CentOS / redhat / arch / cups docu for more informations on that (arch wiki got some examples). For the home printers you can use what ever method available, for ease the web interface / GUI configuration tool should be a good choice.

  Markus