'[FreeNX-kNX] FreeNX 0.6.0.99 snapshot with full printing support'

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List:       freenx-knx
Subject:    [FreeNX-kNX] FreeNX 0.6.0.99 snapshot with full printing support
From:       "Fabian Franz" <FabianFranz () gmx ! de>
Date:       2007-01-24 22:45:27
Message-ID: 20070124224527.226440 () gmx ! net
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Hi,

So it was a real challenge, but I managed to do it and lots more:

I (re-)implemented full printing support for FreeNX and CUPS v.1.2.x.

It works serverside only with CUPS v1.2.x and no longer with CUPS v.1.1.

For the brave testers:

http://studwww.ira.uka.de/~s_franz2/freenx/freenx-0.6.0.99.tar.gz

If I don't get any complaints and find no new bugs this will be released as 0.6.1 (in \
a year or so ;-)).

So, now lets look at the ChangeLog and walk through all the new features and how to \
use them:

        * Fixed the printing support for CUPS 1.2.
          Older versions of CUPS are no longer supported.
          * Note: You might need to do: chmod 755
                  /usr/lib/cups/backend/{ipp, http}

-> This is just in general. While testing I found out that debian set \
/usr/lib/cups/backend/ipp and http to 700 with no reason whatsforever. I guess this \
is just a bug and the chmod did fix it for me.

        * Added foomatic support.
          * Note: You might need to do: ln -s /usr/bin/foomatic-ppdfile
                  /usr/lib/cups/driver/

-> Yes, finally there is the full foomatic support, which you might already know from \
the KDE Printer Wizard. Now NX can use this DB directly as well. However cups needs \
to be aware of it, so the symlink is necessary and by default FreeNX will search for \
/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic-ppdfile.

        * Added setting of CUPS_SERVER environment var.

-> Now this is great! As of CUPS 1.2, it can use UNIX domain sockets as the \
servername. So we export this to the session specific port and whereever we are we \
can always print to it (and other users cannot, because its protected via file system \
permissions.)

-> But what about those KDE apps? First of all you can just enable \
ENABLE_KDE_CUPS="1" and are done with it. Second however you can use a more tricky \
approach if you want to work locally and remote at the same time with the same home \
directory:

Use the following script and save it as for example /usr/bin/nxcupsd_getsock:

--
#!/bin/sh

if [ -n "$NXSESSIONID" -a -r "$HOME/.nx/C-$NXSESSIONID/cups/cups.sock" ]
then
        echo "$HOME/.nx/C-$NXSESSIONID/cups/cups.sock"
else
        echo "/var/run/cups/cups.sock"
fi
--

make it executable (chmod a+x /usr/bin/nxcupsd_getsock) and add the following entry \
to your global kdeprintrc:

Host[$e]=$(/usr/bin/nxcupsd_getsock)

This means whenever we are running in an nxsession we will be redirected to the right \
cupsd, else the system cupsd will be used.

Isn't KDE great?

Future: I was thinking that one could do the same for a "immutable flat profile" to \
just disable all fancy things if running inside an NX session.

        * Added automatic downloading of PPDs, if the client supports it.

-> This is as seamless as it can get for now. You can choose "Download (CUPS)" as the \
driver and it tries to directly retrieve the ppds from the remote userspace cupsd and \
even caches them. You need "curl" in your path for that to function for the moment. \
(Yes, there might be a config directive in the future, but I forgot.)

        * Added configuration vars to tweak the new behaviour.

-> You don't like CUPS_SERVER being exported? Or foomatic db being searched? Well, \
                just disable it in the config file.
-> And nxloadconfig --check was extended to support all new variables and \
automatically test them. So if you don't know if yo uare ready for the next \
generation of printing (TM) just try it with nxloadconfig --check.

        * Added cups seamless support with no "use this driver?" dialogs at all.
          * Note: You need nxcupsd-wrapper on the client side.
                  Get it from nxutils repository.

-> You don't even have to click on "download" anymore. It will without user \
interaction automatically retrieve and install the ppd files. The trick is to have \
the ppds available in the ppd directory on the client but with the special suffix \
_nxdl.ppd. With this method, the local userspace cupsd does not try to load the ppds, \
but the remote cupsd can still read them.

If you use the nxcupsd-wrapper script, which is also necessary to run the !M client \
with CUPS 1.2 it will automatically try to download the PPDs. If you don't have this \
or the script does not work do on the client something like:

$ cd ~/.nx/cups/
$ mkdir ppd
$ cd ppd
$ for i in $(lpstat -p | cut -d" " -f2 ); do wget \
http://localhost:631/printers/$i.ppd -O ${i}_nxdl.ppd; done

As the ppd directory is not deleted by nxclient, you only have to do this once.

To enable completely seamless mode add $ENABLE_CUPS_SEAMLESS="1" to your config.

        * Fixed Support for "Running" sessions - again.

-> Yes, I am terribly sorry, but this seems to be broken in 0.6.0 with 2.1 backend. \
However this affects only running sessions. If you suspend them, everything is fine \
and no zombies to be seen either.

        * Made the NXAgent exited with exit code 1 message more verbose.

-> Yeah, exit 1 status code was a bit well too "spongy". Now it gives detailed \
instructions on what to do. Thanks for the idea.

If you now run CUPS 1.2 on the client side with NX 2.1.0, cupsd won't start. So we \
need to wrap it:

http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/freenx/nx-utils/nxcupsd-wrapper/nxcupsd-wrapper

Download it, put it somewhere in your home directory, chmod a+x nxcupsd-wrapper, and \
point nxclient to it instead of /usr/sbin/cupsd.

That is all and printing with the !M client even with the normal commercial server \
should work again.

You can use the wrapper script also for CUPS/1.1 clients as it has an automatic \
version detection build in. This way all of your linux clients can benefit from the \
new seamless download support function of the ppds.

So I hope you enjoyed this printing "service pack" and see you next level :-).

cu

Fabian

PS: Feedback needed! This has costed me quite some time, so please give me feedback.
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