Ghost printers... and how to exorcise them.

I have a Brother printer-scanner. When I install cups, a package called cups-browsed is also installed. This autodetects and sets up the printer. Trouble is, this printer driver doesn't work. I can make it go away by uninstalling cups-browsed. Then use a script from Brother's website to set up the printer properly. The only issue is that some programs which have their own print dialog, instead of using the system one, still detect the ghost printer.

Two such programs which make use of the printer are LibreOffice and Scribus.

My wife complained that she didn't have access to the printer. She did, but I had to explain that if she tries to print on the one with just a serial number, it works, but if she uses the one which starts "Brother_", it won't.

I don't know if anything can be done about this. I might research it further. It's easy for me as someone who is fairly technically minded, but for others it's a major issue.

See:
https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,147072.msg1255867.html#msg1255867

w3ie wrote:See:
https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,147072.msg1255867.html#msg1255867

I've found on the standard PCLOS, stopping cups-browsed from running doesn't seem to solve the problem. The even more annoying thing is that LibreOffice and Scribus (and possibly other apps) seem to detect these "ghost printers" even if you've uninstalled cups-browsed. There must be another printer-detecting background program, or, that these apps have their own printer-detecting program. Particularly in regard to LibreOffice, I've seen complaints about it all over the internet when I was trying to research how to get rid of them.

1) chkconfig cups-browsed off

as root run:
2) sed -i 's/#enable-dbus=yes/enable-dbus=no/' /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
3) /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

This has always solved  the issue with ghost printers for me in standard PCLinuxOS and worked in Debian PCLinuxOS as well

w3ie wrote:1) chkconfig cups-browsed off

I just get an error message saying no such program as chkconfig. However, removing cups-browsed using synaptic does the job. But the ghost printer still appears in the LibreOffice and Scribus print dialogues.

w3ie wrote:
as root run:
2) sed -i 's/#enable-dbus=yes/enable-dbus=no/' /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
3) /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

This has always solved  the issue with ghost printers for me

YES THIS WORKS! Ghost printers removed from LibreOffice and Scribus print dialogues!!

Will this affect any other hardware?

w3ie wrote:1) chkconfig cups-browsed off

as root run:
2) sed -i 's/#enable-dbus=yes/enable-dbus=no/' /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf
3) /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

This has always solved  the issue with ghost printers for me in standard PCLinuxOS and worked in Debian PCLinuxOS as well

Do not remove cups-browsed

chkconfig cups-browsed off is a setting under PCC>System Services in standard PCLinuxOS and always been off when I checked.

On Debian PCLinuxOS I just ran steps 2 and 3 with successful results.

I have experienced no ill effects with any other hardware.

2 & 3 work for me.