CUPS, Alpine, and printserving

[Beartooth]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:12:09 +1030, Tim wrote:

> Beartooth:
>> Let me see if I have this straight. Having done most of the two
>> footnoted parts above (maybe all -- I tried to), I *think* I can just
>> go from client to client, deleting *all* printers (if all will let me;
>> last time I tried that, as I said above, there was one that seemed
>> immortal, afaict).
> 
> 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.

	I'll bear that in mind.

>> 	If/when I get the present entries deleted, they will presumably
>> once again find my wife's printer downstairs. They did last time,
>> doubly : once as a printer and once as a fax. Does it hurt to have that
>> there? Should I re-delete it, or maybe go shut her machine down (she's
>> out of town) before I start telling clients to find printers?
> 
> I can't see a problem with their being a paper printer and a fax printer
> on the list, unless they're named so badly that you can't pick the right
> one, but a rename would sort that out.
> 
> If that computer's not in use, you could remove it from the equation
> while you set the rest up.
> 
> Tim:
>>> * On my LAN, all the PCs are trusted explicitly, so I took the easy
>>> option of setting the firewall to trust eth0 as a whole, rather than
>>> particular ports.
> 
>> 	I did that, iiuc : marked both eth0 and ippp+ as trusted on all
>> clients and on the server.
> 
> I wouldn't go marking ppp as trusted, that's the interface to the world.
> That's throwing the firewall away, completely.

	It was Ippp+, not ppp+; but I changed it back, to be sure.
               ^         ^
>>> ** Share out that printer to the LAN but it doesn't need sharing to
>>> the internet, unless you have a mixture of different isolated subnets,
>>> where that option will allow crossing from one subnet to another.
> 
>> 	I don't have such complications -- it's all one plain LAN, without
>> subnets. But I don't follow how I share it only to the LAN -- unless
>> that's what trusting eth0 and ippp+ do, perhaps??
> 
> CUPS has two administration options in this area, share printers (to the
> local network), and allow printing from the internet (share it to anyone
> and everything).  The first will only allow printing within the boundary
> of what's considered the local network.
> 
> Firewall configuration is a separate issue.  Allowing *connections*
> between interfaces and ports, and where the allowing and disallowing
> happens (with the local network, and the external network, separately).
> 
> 
>> We don't normally fax things, nor receive faxes; but I can easily
>> imagine it becoming convenient to be able to print to one another's
>> printers, for instance if one breaks down or runs out of ink/
>> toner/whatever. Otoh, it sounds like a large can of worms ...
> 
> Or, if one printer has features that the other does not (colour,
> double-sided, collating, etc.), or you're going to print something
> intended for the other person (it can sit in their printer out tray).
> There's a plethora of reasons why you might do that.
> 
> On the other hand, if you have one printer that you want to be able to
> use anywhere, and another that will only be used with the computer it
> sits next to, then share out the first one, and don't share the second
> one.
>  
>> I haven't (yet, at least) done a thing about my wife's machine nor
>> printer -- not made it either a client or a server.
> 
> So, that's still got the factory pre-configuration, so to speak?  In
> that case, I'd leave it alone while you play with the rest of your
> network, and you can *look* at what it does as you go along.
> 
>>> Having said that, if you're reconfiguring a system which already had
>>> printers configured all over the place on the clients, you'd want to
>>> remove all those configurations, and then let them find the servers by
>>> themselves, again.
> 
>> 	Hmmm ... Does that mean I need to go reconfigure my wife's CUPS
>> in any case??
> 
> Now I'm confused.  If you hadn't done anything to it before, why would
> you need to now?

	I wasn't sure whether the fact that my clients had found her 
printer constituted "printers configured all over the place on the 
clients." Now I take you to mean it doesn't.

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