Re: CUPS - how to match autodetected printers to physical ones

[Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org>]

It's tax season again, so once again I am putting myself through the
utter hell that is attempting to print my city's Income Tax Forms.

(Yes, this is mandatory.  No, they do not accept electronic submissions.
You must use paper and ink.  Yes, they require you to print your own
forms.  No, they will not mail you a form.)

Whatever I managed to do last year... it's not working this year.  I can
only assume that my workplace's lovely IT department has taken even more
drastic steps in their eternal war against anything that isn't blessed
by Microsoft, and isn't under their control.

When I tried to print this year's tax form to my local printer, I learned
that the default print queue I had set up last year is no longer there.

This led to a complete rerun of everything from last year -- going up to
the printer, looking at the piece of paper attached to the front of it
which has the IP address (same one -- 10.76.172.100), attempting to
find a queue in CUPS which matches up with that, sending print jobs to
what *appears* to be the correct printer, having no paper come out, etc.

Eventually I unearthed this thread, which had some advice which worked
in the past.

It is not working today.

Here's a run-down:

1) Someone suggested: avahi-discover -r _print-caps._tcp
   When I tried it last year, it simply hung with no visible output
   until Ctrl-C'ed.

   This year, I ran it while physically present in the workplace, so now
   I know why it hangs.  It pops up an X11 window.  Only after you close
   that X11 window does it print results on the terminal.

   That's extremely difficult to detect or deal with when you're ssh-ing
   in, running commands in a screen session.

2) Also suggested: avahi-browse -rt _ipp._tcp
   This year, the output of that command no longer contains my printer's
   IP address.  Last year, it did.  I have no idea why this has changed.

3) Also suggested: driverless
   Here's what I get this year:

   wooledg:~$ driverless
   ipp://Canon%20LBP712Cdn%20(db%3Ac0%3Ad3)._ipp._tcp.local/

   That's all.  And no, that's not the right printer.  That's the one
   that has the right model number, but isn't *mine*.  I can only imagine
   it's somewhere else on this floor, and that someone is very confused
   upon seeing income tax forms coming out of it.

4) Also mentioned: port 9100.
   For grins, I did "telnet 10.76.172.100 9100" and after that connected
   I typed "HELLO WORLD", then pressed Enter, then Ctrl-] q Enter to
   close the telnet session.

   That actually printed the words HELLO WORLD on a sheet of paper.

So the printer WORKS.  It is ON THE NETWORK.  I can print TEXT to it
using port 9100.

What I CANNOT do is find it in CUPS.  Or avahi-browse, or driverless, or
any of these other commands that are so allegedly wonderful.

Is there any way I can tell CUPS "Please set up a queue for a printer
whose IP address is 10.76.172.100 even though you can't discover it with
your fancy tools"?

Or do I need to use a Windows PC/Laptop to print this stupid form?

Oh, and if it's any help, here's everything that's on the piece of paper
attached to the printer (I took a picture of it with a cell phone, and
carried the phone back to my desk so I can type it all out):

D#: D14841
P#:
IP: 10.76.172.100
Queue \\SPS\S010NEURD14841M
Model # Canon LBP712Cdn
Serial # NGDA008248
Bldg: S
Flr: 10
Zone: Main
Room: 007
Epic ID
Notes B9754

My burning hatred of printers and this printing system remains unquenched.