[TriLUG] setting up cups

[Daniel Sterling]

Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> It's mostly my own stuff. I built from source files
So you're doing Linux From Scratch? or are you using an underlying distro?

One thing you can do is take a look at a distro's source packages. For 
example, debian has cupsys 1.2.3 packaged in sid: 
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/cupsys

 From that site, you can download the upstream source, as well as 
debian's diff, which contains any debian-specific patches, as well as 
the set of instructions (rules) that are used to build the binaries. 
These rules include things like configure options and pre/post 
installation setup. One main thing these extra rules do is ensure a 
consistent directory structure, such as /etc/cups for cups config files, 
/usr/lib/cups for cups back-end binaries, etc.

Additionally, debian package maintainers often include instructions on 
how to get the package "up and running", and/or why it does/doesn't work 
"out of the box". These hints, as well as the package's documentation, 
are often quite useful.

I cited debian here because I am familiar with that distro, but I'm sure 
the same applies to other distros, such as RH's SRPMs and of course 
gentoo, and even BSD ports.

The overall point is that there is a lot to be gleaned from the work 
done by others, even if you are rolling your own.

I'll try to address some of your other questions as best I can from memory:
The cups http interface does alter the configuration files, but it's 
ability is fairly limited,  I believe.

As far as cups's network printer discovery, I believe a server that has 
a printer that it is configured to share will send broadcast packets to 
the network, which clients can be configured to listen for. 
cupsd.conf(5) has a list of directives that deal with browsing. That man 
page also says to refer to the on-line documentation for details.

-- Dan

 every option is available