[CentOS] Inconsistent printing on Centos 7

Fri Aug 29 17:38:55 UTC 2014
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Fri, August 29, 2014 12:25 pm, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Frank Cox wrote:
>> I have ongoing issues with my Xerox Phaser 2550 printer under Centos 7.
>> It always worked without any issues on Centos 6 before I upgraded to
>> Centos 7.
>>
>> The problem manifests itself by regularly (but not every time) printing
>> page after page of garbage instead of the document that I wanted to
>> print
>> out.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  The same document might
>> print fine now but then I get pages of garbage the next time I print.
>>
>> I have it set up as a shared printer on my network; the other computers
>> on
>> my network are all Centos 6.
> <SNIP>
> That, to me, sounds like a driver issue - pages and pages of garbage
> reminds me of postscript not going through a ps driver.
>
> One other possibility, though very unlikely in your case, is someone
> probing your network. We just realized that the crap showing up every day
> or so on the printer near me was actually our PEN tester team hitting the
> printer (the http help was curious; the line with (nessus) told me the
> story).

Which suggests: set up printer to accept connections from print server
only, and have all clients set up so that they talk to print server. And
avoid print server accepting print jobs from everywhere on the network
(only ones who can physically walk up to the printer and pick up their
print jobs have legitimate right to print to it ;-). Kind of defeats lazy
setup like "just share the printer"... But effort pays off in not wasted
supplies at least, and in easy troubleshooting when one of the clients
manages to consistently hit printer firmware bug...

Valeri

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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