Confinguration of Network-based printer unclear

Bug #80798 reported by Jon "maddog" Hall
30
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
cupsys (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Nominated for Feisty by C de-Avillez
gnome-cups-manager (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Nominated for Feisty by C de-Avillez

Bug Description

I have a D-Link DP-G310 Wireless print-server attached to an Epson Stylus Photo R300

I installed Ubuntu "Edgy" I go to add a printer. It has "local" and
"networked". I chose "networked". It gave me choices of:

CUPS Printer (IPP)
Windows Printer (SMB)
Unix Printer (LPD)
HP Jet Direct

I did not have one of those proprietary HP Jet Direct thingamabobs, so I concentrated on the other three entries in the list. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to use the other three (unsuccessfully), when I should have chosen "HP Jet Direct"

What I really needed to chose was:

"Raw network device (e.g.) HP JetDirect Card or D-Link print server"

and I would have been printing much sooner. Perhaps you could reword "HP Jet Direct"
to point people who have other network print servers.

Thanks,

maddog

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

This is solved by both CUPS 1.2 (with its SNMP backend which scans for network printers) and by printerdrake, the planned replacement of the gnome-cups-manager (providing a GUI frontend for the SNMP backend).

Problem of Ubuntu here is that the SNMP backend is deactivated by default (by putting it into /usr/lib/cups/backend-available/). My suggestion is to make it active for Feisty. The scan takes only 3-4 sec and is very useful, especially for unexperienced users.

Changed in gnome-cups-manager:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Changed in cupsys:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in gnome-cups-manager:
importance: Undecided → Medium
Revision history for this message
C de-Avillez (hggdh2) wrote :

If we can simplify the life of the casual user, I cannot see why not to do it -- mostly if it is a question of activating an existing option.

Nevertheless, the wording should still change to something like "HP Jet Direct/Raw device".

Just saying "HP Jet Direct" confuses the hell out of someone that got a Brother, Epson, or other printer/interface that runs on raw mode.

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

I have improved the text of this menu entry now. Packages for testing are here:

http://www.linux-foundation.org/~till/tmp/ubuntu/feisty/gnome-cups-manager/

Changed in gnome-cups-manager:
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

I have reactivated the SNMP backend in CUPS now. In the web interface you will also see auto-detected network printers. Test packages:

http://www.linux-foundation.org/~till/tmp/ubuntu/feistycupsys/

To see the auto-detected network printers in the gnome-cups-manager as small change was required. Test it with the fixed version:

http://www.linux-foundation.org/~till/tmp/ubuntu/feisty/gnome-cups-manager/

Changed in cupsys:
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

Binary packages for immediate testing your find in the binary/ subdirectories of the two URLs.

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

You can configure the choice of CUPS backends to be used with

sudo dpkg-reconfigure cupsys

Note that package updating keeps the current configuration, so you need to activate the backends manually, even if you update the cupsys package.

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

If you update to cupsys 1.2.8-0ubuntu3 the backends snmp, scsi, and serial get automatically updated, but only on this update. If you deactivate them afterwards they will stay deactivated on further updates of cupsys.

Changed in cupsys:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Changed in gnome-cups-manager:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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