CUPS, Alpine, and printserving

[Beartooth]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:07:19 +1030, Tim wrote:

> Tim:
>>> If desperate, one could go into /etc/cups/ and remove the entries for
>>> particular printers.  I'm not sure how it handles missing files, but
>>> you could load the file and remove all the configuration data, leaving
>>> just the two comment lines at the top of printers.conf.
> 
> Beartooth:
>> Would you believe that's what it shows now? Yet both Firefox and Opera
>> insist on showing three.
> 
> Yes, printers.conf shows "local" printers.  I'm betting that the
> printers showing up in your browsers are not local ones, but ones on
> another PC and available over the network.
> 
>> I tried using Hbsk and Hbsk.localdomain (which is what uname shows for
>> this machine) on Opera, but it failed to connect, though I saw it try
>> 127.0.0.1
> 
> Tried using them for what?

	For 'localhost' in pointing the browser at its own machine. 

	This is a vexed question here. I've given all the machines names, 
in hope of better telling them apart under ssh and scp. My router, 
however (a Netgear MBR 814, from my local access provider) sometimes uses 
the names and sometimes does not, in displays for me to read; I can't 
tell what it says to the machines about one another, so I tried things it 
might be saying.
 
> 127.0.0.1 is computer speak for myself, network-wise.  All computers
> connect to themselves at 127.0.0.1.  By convention, "localhost" is
> related to that IP.  And by a Linux convention, "localhost.localdomain"
> is, as well (most likely to satisfy things that want a domain name with
> at least one dot in it).

	Yes, I did know that much; and what I seemed to be seeing was a 
failure of it. Hbsk went looking for localhost, translated that into 
127.0.0.1 -- and them failed to find it. So I thought it might have 
better luck starting from 'Hbsk'; it was an easy thing to try.
 
> Whereas other hostnames are generally applied to other network
> interfaces, and some services may not listen to them by default, for
> security reasons, so that they can't be messed with by others over your
> network.
 
	When I first started using names, I hoped that might be an 
additional benefit; I'm glad to hear it may, indeed.

	Incidentally, CUPS on *some* machines seems to be doing another 
strange thing. When I tell it with Firefox to delete a printer, or make 
on default, or whatever, Firefox opens a tab (labelled 426) telling me I 
now have to use https with some other machine's IP, 192.168.x.y; it lets 
me click on it; and then the whole tab goes blank. 

	Looks to me as if it's trying to delete an unwanted printer not 
from its own printers.conf (which I know from the command line doesn't 
have it anyway) but from the other machine it imagines that printer to be 
attached to. (It isn't.)

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.