Bug#430965: gnome-cups-manager: Extremely unpleasant to network server

[John Goerzen]

Package: gnome-cups-manager
Version: 0.31-3
Severity: grave

gnome-cups-manager polls cups about all printers every few seconds.

We run this on many clients, and have dozens of printers defined.

Each client does not run a local cupsd, but instead has cupsys-client 
installed, with a line in /etc/cups/client.conf that directs them to the 
central server.

The result is pretty much the same as a denial of service attack on the 
server.  All these clients sending all these requests so frequently is 
running the server into the ground.

There is no reason at all to poll the printers so often, and no way in 
the preferences to change the polling interval.  Actually, the only 
reason it polls seems to be to put printer icons on the panel, which is 
completely annoying and useless for sites that have many printers -- and 
also appears to be something that cannot be disabled globally very 
easily -- and is on by default whenever gnome-cups-manager is installed.

All in all, not a very pleasant setup.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable'), (99, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages gnome-cups-manager depends on:
ii  libart-2.0-2               2.3.17-1      Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0                1.12.4-3      The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbonobo2-0               2.14.0-3      Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0             2.14.0-5      The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                      2.3.6.ds1-13  GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2                  1.2.4-4       The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libcupsys2                 1.2.7-4       Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libfontconfig1             2.4.2-1.2     generic font configuration library
ii  libgconf2-4                2.16.1-1      GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0                1:2.6.0-4     library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0               2.12.4-2      The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-keyring0          0.6.0-3       GNOME keyring services library
ii  libgnome2-0                2.16.0-2      The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0          2.14.0-2      A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomecups1.0-1          0.2.2-5       GNOME library for CUPS interaction
ii  libgnomecupsui1.0-1c2a     0.31-3        UI extensions to libgnomecups
ii  libgnomeui-0               2.14.1-2      The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0             1:2.14.2-7    GNOME virtual file-system (runtime
ii  libgnutls13                1.4.4-3       the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libgtk2.0-0                2.8.20-7      The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6                    1:1.0.1-2     X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  liborbit2                  1:2.14.3-0.1  libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpango1.0-0              1.14.8-5      Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpopt0                   1.10-3        lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  libsm6                     1:1.0.1-3     X11 Session Management library
ii  libx11-6                   2:1.0.3-7     X11 client-side library
ii  libxcursor1                1.1.7-4       X cursor management library
ii  libxext6                   1:1.0.1-2     X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxfixes3                 1:4.0.1-5     X11 miscellaneous 'fixes' extensio
ii  libxi6                     1:1.0.1-4     X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1               1:1.0.1-4.1   X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2                    2.6.27.dfsg-1 GNOME XML library
ii  libxrandr2                 2:1.1.0.2-5   X11 RandR extension library
ii  libxrender1                1:0.9.1-3     X Rendering Extension client libra

Versions of packages gnome-cups-manager recommends:
ii  gksu                          2.0.0-1    graphical frontend to su

-- no debconf information