Mint 18 unwanted printers [solved]

[AndyMH]

I've got a Lenovo T410 running 17.3 with three printers intstalled:

• Brother HL4140CN - network printer hard wired
  XP305-Network - Epson with wireless on the network
  XP305-USB - same Epson, but when its plugged in via USB

That it ALL that is showing in printers.

I've just got a T430 and have installed Mint 18 on it. It has the same printers as above but keeps adding:

• hl4140cn
  xp-305-network

These don't work because the URI is wrong. I've have deleted these printers, after a couple of seconds they re-appear. I've tried view and unchecking 'discovered printers'. It makes no difference, they just re-appear. Confusing, because when you are in an app, e.g. libre write and go to print these printers show up, and have to remember which is the 'real' one.

Don't have this problem in 17.3, how do I make it go away in 18?

[Neil Edmond]

I don't have the answer, but will join you in seeking one, as I have a similar issue with Mint 17.3...
If I recall, each of my printers show two entries on the printers list, one works and the other doesn't.

[altair4]

I've never gone out of my way to disable it but these "discovered" printers are due to a service called cups-browsed. The difference between Mint 17 and 18 is systemd.

If you stop the cups-browsed service systemd will think you are kidding so it restarts it. What you might want to try is disabling the service instead:

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl mask cups-browsed

Then reboot. A "mask" will prevent the service from being started.

Should that not fix things unmask it:

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl unmask cups-browsed

Followed by a:

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl start cups-browsed

[AndyMH]

Thanks for the info, haven't used it, but filed away for future reference.

The way I fixed it was to go into printers, select one that I had manually installed, goto properties and copy the URI. Then goto into properties for the same printer that Mint is adding automatically (it will take a while, it cant find the right print queue from memory), and paste the correct URI and save/apply. Now you can delete the printer that was added manually.

Note - you MUST NOT change the printer's name, if you do that Mint will simply add it again with the original name.

On reboot you see the right number of printers with no duplicates.

[AndyMH]

In addition to my previous, I've also tried, as suggested:

Code: Select all

sudo systemctl mask cups-browsed

Worked! It has survived several re-boots and the unwanted printers are not coming back. This would be my preferred method and having done a complete re-install of my Mint 18.1 is what I've done. Many thanks for the info.

[letarch]

Try it:

systemctl mask cups-browsed

It's worked. System-config-printer not have printer.
But libreoffice have ~7 printers when printing...
How-to fix it?