No more printer broadcast in CUPS 1.6.1 - downgrade?

[vaettchen]

I have a home server that I also use as a CUPS server, offering the printers in our house easily to everybody without installing drivers etc. As this, after the last "equo upgrade", didn't work anymore, I did some research and found out that the feature "broadcast installed printers to other computers on the network" is removed from CUPS beginning from version 1.6.1.

Question. Can I (and how?) downgrade to 1.5.x? Or does anybody have some better idea what to do?

Printing should be easy...

Thanks,
Rainer

[svantoviit]

not sure, but maybe this will do (as suggested by the post-install message)

Code: Select all

 * Network browsing for printers is now switched off by default in the config file.
 * To (re-)enable it, edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and set "Browsing On",
 * afterwards re-start or reload cups.

[vaettchen]

Thanks, but unfortunately, this is not it - "Browsing On" has been set before.

The problem is that the feature of CUPS broadcasting/browsing and automatic appearing of remote CUPS queues has been removed from CUPS 1.6.x on.

(see here.)

CUPS has always been a nightmare in terms of not announced and barely documented feature changes and forced default settings, but this one is the worst. If somebody could help me to find out how to move back to 1.5.1, I'd happily do so and stay there.

[tollgate]

I just checked my version of CUPs and it's also 1.6.1. On my server the printer is shared and in CUPS on a remote computer (same network) the printer is discovered and I can install it. BUT it installs as a dnssd protocol printer, and although I can print a test page, I cannot print from any application. I solved this by deleting the "discovered" printer and installing manually using http://192.168.0.243:631/printers/Canon_MX360_series. Looking at the CUPS web pages, it would appear that printers are now shared using: "Bonjour printer sharing and discovery is now also supported using Avahi" - (maybe that is just a MAC thing?), but I have no idea at the moment how that works.

[tollgate]

As vaettchen says, CUPS no longer broadcasts printers as before. It now relies on the avahi-daemon. I think most Sabayon installs will have this installed as default. Certainly my two computers have it. And indeed, my remote printers are discovered and the URI looks like this on my system "dnssd://HP%20Deskjet%20D2500%20series%20%40%20sabayon._ipp._tcp.local/cups".

BUT, once the printer is installed, I cannot print to it. According to CUPS the printer cannot be found - remember this is after it was "discovered". So Avahi seems to be doing its job, but something fails thereafter.