Slow CUPS printing performance

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

Situation

When printing using the Linux "lpr" command, there is a delay before the print job completes.

When printing from a workstation running Windows XP to a SLES 10 server running CUPS via SAMBA, there is a delay when enumerating printers (i.e. in order to select a different printer from within the "Print" menu of an application) before the lists of printers appears.

Resolution

In its default configuration, the cups-lpd process requests a list of all the printers per lpd-job. To change this, you need to modify the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and add a "Limit" statement. The relevant access control is "CUPS-Get-Devices", which gets a list of available devices. Here is an example:

# Set the default printer/job policies...

# Getting a list of devices is limited to the owner or an adminstrator...

Require user @OWNER @SYSTEM
Order deny,allow

In this case, only the owner or an administrator would see the delay caused by enumerating the list of available printers.

After you modify the cupsd.conf, you will need to restart CUPS for the setting to take effect.

Additional Information

Documentation on the Policy directive: http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/ref-cupsd-conf.html#Policy

Documentation on the Limit section and CUPS-Get-Devices access control directive: http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/ref-cupsd-conf.html#LimitIPP

Disclaimer

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