[Bug 24999] repeated printer drivers on HPLIP

[Pascal De Vuyst]

Public bug report changed:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/24999

Comment:
I'm using Dapper 20060319
foomatic-filters-ppds 20060113-1
hplip-ppds 0.9.6-1ubuntu6

This is because gnome-cups-manager and CUPS Add Printer webinterface look for PPDs in /usr/share/cups/model.
Both the foomatic-filters-ppds and hplip package (installed by default on Ubuntu) provide a symlink in this directory.
foomatic-ppds symlink points to /usr/share/ppd and hplip symlink points to /usr/share/ppd/hplip.
These symlinks overlap each other causing gnome-cups-add and CUPS add printer webinterface to list duplicate driver entries that are actually the same files.

A long term solution to avoid this would be achieved if all PPD providing packages followed this specification: http://wiki.debian.org/PpdFileStructureSpecification.
I'm trying to persuade the Debain maintainers involved but this will take a long time.

A simple workaround is to remove the hplip symlink in
/usr/share/cups/model provide by hplip-ppds package. The Ubuntu devs
should include this simple fix before the release of Dapper.

The printer drivers known to CUPS can be listed with the following command in a terminal:
$ lpinfo -m

I have run this command first (see cupsdriversbefore attachment) and
again after removing the /usr/share/cups/model/hplip symlink (see
cupdriversafter attachment).

When counting the lines in these files we see that 443 duplicate drivers
have been removed:

$ wc -l cupsdriversbefore
3749 cupsdriversbefore

$ wc -l cupsdriversafter
3306 cupsdriversafter