Bug#894664: cups: Libreoffice doesn't see my network printer

[Brian Potkin <claremont102@gmail.com>]

Thank you for your report, Stefan.


On Mon 02 Apr 2018 at 23:15:18 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> Package: cups
> Version: 2.2.1-8+deb9u1
> Severity: normal
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> I have a printer connected via USB to a local server (running Debian stable as
> well).  This printer is made visible to my clients by running cups-browsed.

For the server to advertise its printers with DNS-SD cups-browsed is
superfluous.

> My clients have no locally-configured printers (and hence no "default"
> printer), and indeed when I go to "localhost:631" I don't see any printers
> there.

For most applications and command line programs cups-browsed has to be
running on the client; seeing nothing at localhost:631 implies it is
not. Please give the outputs of

  systemctl status cups-browsed

and

  lpstat -t

on the client.

> Yet, this somehow works: e.g. evince sees my network printer just fine.  But
> Libreoffice doesn't.  I haven't tried all applications to figure out which do
> and which don't, so maybe Libreoffice is not the only one affected.

Evince can read the server's DNS-SD broadcasts directly; it doesn't need
cups-browsed. Libreoffice cannot read the server's DNS-SD broadcasts
directly.

> I've seen bug#867818 which seems related, but my `cups` is an older version
> than the one that seems to be affected by that problem.
> 
> I've also seen bug#772097, but that one seems older than mine (back around that
> time, cups-browsed would actually cause the network printer to appear in
> /etc/cu0ps/printers.conf and in localhost:631 and Libreoffice could see it fine
> then).

We'll put this on one side for the moment.

Regards,

Brian.