CSCF Printing Infrastructure Renewal

Purpose

Provide a modern reliable printing infrastructure to replace our legacy CUPS and LPD services.

Development plan (as of 2012-3-1)

This list is ordered in the order that tasks should be accomplished.

• set up a new CUPS print server, cups2.cs, using ubuntu-10.10 on a Linux Container
  • initial OS configuration
  • package selection and installation
  • initial cups configuration and testing
  • done as of 2012-3-1

• duplicate print queues from old cups.cs (services118.cs) to cups2.cs
  • install pyquota on cups2.cs
  • test and enhance the new queues
  • move cups.cs CNAME from services118.cs to cups2.cs; test
  • production testing

• delegate the decommissioning of services118.cs

• improve monitoring of cups service on cups2.cs

• duplicate queues from old cups service on print.cs (services102.cs) to cups2.cs
  • test and enhance the new queues
  • reconfigure cups queues on print.cs to simply forward to cups.cs or lpd on print.cs
  • production testing

• duplicate simple queues from legacy LPD service on print.cs to cups service on cups2.cs
  • test and enhance the new queues
  • reconfigure simple LPD queues on print.cs to simply forward to cups.cs
  • production testing

• port lpquota service to pyquota

• duplicate remaining queues from legacy LPD service on print.cs to cups service on cups2.cs
  • test and enhance the new queues
  • reconfigure remaining LPD queues on print.cs to simply forward to cups.cs
  • move print.cs CNAME from services102.cs to cups2.cs
  • production testing

• lj_csgrad is moved to the new service

• decommission cups and lpd services on services102.cs

• set up a second new CUPS print server, cups1.cs, similar to cups2.cs
  • duplicate cups configuration from cups2.cs to cups1.cs
  • set up monitoring of cups1.cs
  • test fail-over and load balancing between cups1.cs and cups2.cs

Short-term goal: improve reliability of current grad printing facility

• install pykota on cups2.cs

• move lj_csgrad queue from print.cs to cups2.cs
  • test relocated queue

• set up printer class for the two printers

• manual extract of quota data from lpquota and manual insert into pykota
  • investigate and resolve semantic differences between pykota and lpquota
  • production testing

• communicate with "printer administrators" about changes
  • prepare how-to, FAQ, etc documents or references

• release to community

CSCF master ST item:

• 81282