cups-browsed(8)

💅 cups-browsed(8) — your new bestie, the printer daemon

okay so bestie, listen. this is the page for cups-browsed, and yes the manual name is literally cups-browsed and it lives in section 8, and it's A daemon for browsing the Bonjour broadcasts of shared, remote CUPS printers. like... it finds printers for you. it's giving matchmaker energy but for CUPS queues. 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cups-browsed [-v | -d | --debug] [-c config-file]
[-o option=value] [-o 'config file line'] ...
[--autoshutdown=mode] [--autoshutdown-timeout=timeout]
[-h | --help | --version]

that's the whole vibe check right there. no cap, that's the whole invocation. 🫶

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so cups-browsed has two functions, and they're independently switchable — like two separate little toggles and you can have either, both, whatever. 👑

1. Browse DNS-SD broadcasts of remote printers and create/remove local CUPS queues pointing to these printers.
2. Find shared printers on given CUPS servers and create local CUPS queues pointing to them.

now the fun part: you can run cups-browsed permanently (from system boot all the way to shutdown, main character energy, it lives there 💅) or on-demand (say, to save resources on mobile devices, which honestly? valid. battery is real 🔋). and if you're doing the on-demand thing, there's an auto-shutdown feature you can activate so cups-browsed just... dips when it doesn't have any queues left to take care of. iconic. it knows when to leave the party. ✨

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🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

• -v, -d, --debug — debug mode bestie, verbose logging straight to stderr. it will tell you everything. 😭
• -l, --logfile — debug logging goes into the file /var/log/cups/cups-browsed_log instead. same tea, just written down. 📝
• -c config-file — use the alternative configuration file config-file instead of the standard one. your file, your rules. 🎀
• -o option=value, -o 'config file line' — supply configuration options straight from the command line! you can hand it any line that could also go into the configuration file, but heads up: because of the spaces, that line has to be put into quotes. OR, for a simple key/value pair, you can swap the space between key and value for =. easy. 💖

⚠️ but like, important: if command-line-supplied configuration settings contradict the ones in the configuration file, the ones in the configuration file win. the file ate and left no crumbs. 🙈

• --autoshutdown=mode — the auto shutdown mode, and mode can be:
  • off — no auto shutdown, we stay forever 🫶
  • on — auto shutdown is active
  • avahi — control by the avahi-daemon being run on-demand: auto-shutdown gets turned off while avahi-daemon is present, and on when avahi-daemon is shut down. teamwork, kinda. 🧚
• --autoshutdown-on=inactivity-type — this is literally what cups-browsed considers "inactivity" for auto-shutdown. inactivity-type:
  • no-queues (the default) — auto-shutdown kicks in if there are no queues generated by cups-browsed any more
  • no-jobs — auto-shutdown kicks in if all queues generated by cups-browsed are without jobs
• --autoshutdown-timeout=timeout — timeout tells you after how many seconds cups-browsed should shut down if it has no local queues set up for any discovered remote printer any more, or jobs on these. default is 30 seconds. and 0 means immediate shutdown — like, zero chill, gone instantly. 💀
• -h, --help, --version — display usage and version info and do not start the daemon. it's just here to say hi and leave. 👋

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🍓 FILES 🍓

• /etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf

that's the one, that's the config file, periodt. 💜

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🔥 SIGNALS 🔥

• SIGINT, SIGTERM — cups-browsed will shutdown. bye bestie 😭
• SIGUSR1 — switches cups-browsed into permanent mode (no auto shutdown). it's staying. forever. 🫶
• SIGUSR2 — switches cups-browsed into auto shutdown mode. back to the on-demand lifestyle. ✨

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⭐ NOTES ⭐

this manual page was written for the Debian Project, but it may be used by others. sharing is caring, iykyk. 💖

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• cups-browsed.conf(5)

go read it, it's the sequel. 📚

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and that's the whole page, bestie! 🎀 this little write-up is cups-browsed(8), dated 29 June 2013, and it's literally an icon of a manpage from way back. slay, stay breezy, and may your queues always be discovered. 💅✨🦋