Google Cloud Print out-of-the-box

Till Kamppeter till.kamppeter at gmail.com
Mon Feb 20 21:55:03 UTC 2017


On 02/12/2017 12:24 AM, Marcos Alano wrote:
> Hi everybody!
>
>
> I was wondering there is no support for Google Cloud Print
> out-of-the-box on Ubuntu. Fedora has this feature (I don't use so I
> can't test). There this piece of software called CUPS Cloud Print
> (https://www.niftiestsoftware.com/cups-cloud-print/) which make locally
> available all printers on one or more Google accounts via Cloud Print.
>
> The idea is when add an Google account on Online Accounts settings, all
> printers related will be show on CUPS like regular local/network printers.
>
> What you guys think?
>
>
>

Thank you for the hint.

Problem of this solution is the following:

CUPS queues are system-wide. Once a CUPS queue is set up it is available 
(or at least visible) for all users on the system.

Google Cloud Print printers are a personal resource of the user. To use 
Google Cloud Print, the user has to register printers in his Google 
account, so that he can use them from everywhere where he has access to 
his Google account.

If the user generates local CUPS queues for each of his Google Cloud 
Print printers, every other user on the same machine will see them and 
usually also will be able to print on them. So unwished jobs make it 
onto the user's printer's and other users do not know where their jobs 
end up to be printed. Malicious uses can even send lots of jobs to waste 
resources and do DoS attacks.

The correct way would be that the print dialog has a facility to access 
the Google account of the user currently logged in and list the user's 
cloud printers independent of CUPS and send jobs directly to the cloud 
printers. Only this way the cloud printers are only available to the 
user who owns them.

There will be an OpenPrinting project in the Google Summer of Code where 
a Common Print Dialog with support of Google Cloud Print will be done:

https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/gsoc/google-summer-code-2017-openprinting-projects#common-print-dialog-for-desktop-applications-and-mobile-devices-up-to-3-4-students

    Till





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