Chapter 12. Using cups-browsed to locally integrate printers from a remote print server

Procedure

1. Edit the /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf file, and make the following changes:

   1. Add BrowsePoll parameters for each remote CUPS server you want to poll:

      BrowsePoll remote_cups_server.example.com
      BrowsePoll 192.0.2.100:1631

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      Append :_<port>_ to the hostname or IP address if the remote CUPS server listens on a port different from 631.

   2. Optional: Configure a filter to limit which printers are shown in the local CUPS service. For example, to filter for queues whose name contain sales_, add:

      BrowseFilter name sales_

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      You can filter by different field names, negate the filter, and match the exact values. For further details, see the parameter description and examples in the cups-browsed.conf(5) man page on your system.

   3. Optional: Change the polling interval and timeout to limit the number of browsing cycles:

      BrowseInterval 1200
      BrowseTimeout 6000

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      Increase both BrowseInterval and BrowseTimeout in the same ratio to avoid situations in which printers disappear from the browsing list. This mean, multiply the value of BrowseInterval by 5 or a higher integer, and use this result value for BrowseTimeout.

      By default, cups-browsed polls remote servers every 60 seconds and the timeout is 300 seconds. However, on print servers with many queues, these default values can cost many resources.

2. Enable and start the cups-browsed service:

   # systemctl enable --now cups-browsed

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