Re: How to Turn Off Autodiscovered Printers in Firefox?

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 8:57 AM, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:

On Tue 26 Sep 2017 at 12:08:02 +0000, Curt wrote:

> On 2017-09-26, Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
> > On Tue 26 Sep 2017 at 00:15:31 -0500, Kent West wrote:
> >
> >> So when I go to select a printer in Firefox, there are many autodiscovered
> >> printers to choose from. I don't want any of them in my list. How do I turn
> >> this off?
> >
> > See later. But first stop or purge cups-browsed.
> >
> >> I found the two "browse" options in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, but they make no
> >> difference. I found /etc/cups/cups-browsed, but killing that daemon makes
> >> no difference. In fact, killing CUPS altogether makes no difference (except
> >> my desired printer then goes away), so obviously this isn't a CUPS thing.
> >
> > Correct.

If this isn't a CUPS thing, what's the value in stopping or purging cups-browsed?

> >
> >> Then I discovered Avahi (and had to go into learning mode - apparently this
> >> is also known as "Bonjour" and "Rendevous" and "ZeroConf", depending on OS
> >> and version and situation). The most obvious tweaks in
> >> /"etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf", the two "disable-publishing..." options,
> >> don't do anything.
> >
> > Indeed not. They affect publishing, not discovery.

As in "publishing to other computers on the network", not as in "publishing to applications, like Firefox, on this computer"?

I don't mind Avahi discovering printers; I just don't want it "publishing" what it found to Firefox. Apparently I misunderstood the scope of the word "publish".

> >> So, any one know how to tell Avahi to not publish found printers to
> >> Firefox's print dialog?
> >
> > All GTK applications can use avahi-daemon for printer discovery. It is
> > GTK you want to control, not avahi-daemon. gtk-print-backends is the
> > relevant property to use. Its default value is "file,cups".
> >
> > I think Firefox uses GTK3. In /etc/gtk-3.0 or ~/.gtk-3.0 you want to
> > create the file settings.ini and see what the contents
> >
> > [Settings]
> > gtk-print-backends=file
> >
> > do for you. (The file name and format is different for GTK2).

When I do this, *all* my printers disappear from the Firefox dialog, including the one I've got in CUPS, which shows up in the CUPS web dialog (localhost:631) and in /etc/cups/printers.conf.

>
> Some anonymous joe on the internet said you can edit the [server]
> section of the /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf file and uncomment the
> 'enable-dbus=yes' line, changing that line to 'enable-dbus=no' and this
> will disable printer discovery (while retaining dns functionality).
>
> Whether this works or not, or how perilously or ridiculously close this
> edit is to just turning the damned avahi thing off altogether, I do not
> know.

I tried this and the GTK print dialog took ages to come up. I'd also be
concerned about other possible knock-on effects. Why "damned avahi
thing..."? You make it sound evil.

When I tried this, it solved my problem, and I don't notice any delay issues.

Kent West <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com