[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#381855: cupsys: CUPS uses wrong paper size for remote CUPS printers

[John Winters]

Package: cupsys
Version: 1.2.2-1
Severity: important


The current version of CUPS in Etch doesn't seem to pick up the paper
size from printers on other CUPS servers.  Although the CUPS server has
them configured with A4 paper, remote workstations running Etch always
try to use them as if they had letter-sized paper.

I thought at first that this was a problem between different versions
of CUPS, as the main print server on our network is running Sarge and
CUPS version 1.1.23-10sarge.  Sarge workstations get the paper size
right but Etch workstations get it wrong.

However, I've now done some further tests and it seems to be a
fundamental problem with CUPS 1.2.2-1 accessing remote printers on
another CUPS server.

I took two Etch workstations, each of which was getting the paper size
wrong for printers accessed on the main print server.  I attached a
printer to each of these workstations and configured them (through CUPS)
as local printers with A4 sized paper.  Attempting to print to either
printer on the workstation to which it is attached correctly brings up
A4 as the paper size.

However, I then changed the CUPS settings on each of the workstations to
make the new printers available to other machines on the network.  Each
workstation quickly added the other's printer to its list of
available printers, but attempting to print to them always brings up
"Letter" as the preferred paper size, despite them both being set to A4.

Each instance of CUPS seems to be respecting the paper size
configuration when accessing a local printer, but ignoring it and using
Letter instead when accessing a remote CUPS printer.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-amtrak1
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB)

Versions of packages cupsys depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.95            Add and remove users and groups
ii  cupsys-common            1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.5.2           Debian configuration management sy
ii  gs-esp                   8.15.1.dfsg.1-2 The Ghostscript PostScript interpr
ii  libacl1                  2.2.41-1        Access control list shared library
ii  libc6                    2.3.6-15        GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcupsimage2            1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsys2               1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-2              0.62-4          simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgnutls13              1.4.1-1         the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libldap2                 2.1.30-13+b1    OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam0g                 0.79-3.1        Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpaper1                1.1.19          Library for handling paper charact
ii  libslp1                  1.2.1-5         OpenSLP libraries
ii  lsb-base                 3.1-10          Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  patch                    2.5.9-4         Apply a diff file to an original
ii  perl-modules             5.8.8-4         Core Perl modules
ii  poppler-utils [xpdf-util 0.4.5-4.1       PDF utilitites (based on libpopple
ii  procps                   1:3.2.7-2       /proc file system utilities
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.3-13      compression library - runtime

Versions of packages cupsys recommends:
ii  cupsys-client           1.2.2-1          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  foomatic-filters        3.0.2-20060712-1 linuxprinting.org printer support 
pn  smbclient               <none>           (no description available)

-- debconf information:
  cupsys/raw-print: true
  cupsys/backend: ipp, lpd, parallel, socket, usb