Cloud Printer disappeared - no obvious reason

[Heidi Hendry]

Hi,
Yesterday, I associated a Fuji Xerox DocuCentre S2220 with a personal gmail account, by downloading the CloudPrintService setup, installing it, configuring it with a local admin account, and got it successfully working. All on a laptop with a USB connection to the printer. I also setup other users to "manage" and confirmed that they could print.

Today, it's disappeared from the "Google Cloud Print".
We've checked the services, they are running (Print Spooler and Google Cloud Print).

What's going on? How do I fix this?

[Heidi Hendry]

So, I _think_ that it happened due to a power off. So I set the power options to stay on while plugged in.
Nope, still lost the Google Cloud Print over night.

Not a very good beta.

[TS]

Google Cloud Print is probably not to blame. What you describe in your second post strongly suggests that the problem is really a DHCP issue (as described here).
I suspect that simply rebooting the laptop* (which you are effectively using as a gcp server) or assigning it a unique static IPv4 address (outside of the DHCP range managed by your router) will fix the second problem (it might also help to read what I have written about static IP configuration here).

*You may find it necessary to also reboot the router if another computer (also using DHCP) has joined the LAN: In similar (but not identical) circumstances, I find it simplest to reboot every computer on the relevant LAN (as well as the router) in order to resolve the IP address confusion/conflict when a computer is allocated the same IPv4 address previously used by a different computer (which is still switched on but has been disconnected from the LAN). Note: Unique static IP addresses (outside of the DHCP range managed by your router) are immune from this problem. However when configuring a computer for a static IP address, you will also need to explicitly define static routing or gateway on it (in a home computing environment this would be your router's own IPv4 address) and also DNS. If you are happy with ISP DNS, simply enter your router's IPv4 address in the DNS field.

[Heidi Hendry]

Thank you for responding.

I read your links.

The printer does not just go "offline" but disappears completely.

The printer itself has a static IP. But it's a "classic" printer (as defined by GCP).

Do you think that I need:
-a static IP for the laptop?
-a static IP for the router?
to make this work?

Thanks

[TS]

I am reasonably confident about this bit:

Your router will already have a static IP address (commonly this is 192.168.x.y where x = 0 or 1 and y = 1 or 254). However the router's IP address should be irrelevant.

Since you need your laptop to act as a server, it should be assigned a unique static IPv4 address (in addition to your printer) to avoid the DHCP problem mentioned previously taking it offline.

When I have logged into to the same account as used for registering a classic printer (but not on the server PC) I have observed the printer status as offline when it is indeed offline.

I am less confident about this bit:

When I have logged into to a different account (to which the printer had been shared) I can't actually remember whether the printer permanently or temporarily disappeared as a result of it going offline. What I can remember is having to share the printer again but I can't remember why I had to do it. Consequently I am not sure about the robustness of the printer sharing aspect of GCP.  

Caveat:

If you find that nothing I have suggested works, it may be because we are using different software. I use the GCP connector from (Ubuntu) Linux Chromium which seems pretty reliable.

[Heidi Hendry]

I did not mean an internal static IP for the router. I meant a static IP address for the router with the ISP (like you do when you setup port forwarding for VPN and things like that)
Thanks for letting me know that you are working with a different gcp instance.

I will give it a try next time I am at the client site.

[TS]

On Sunday, 20 March 2016 11:53:25 UTC, Heidi Hendry wrote:

I did not mean an internal static IP for the router. I meant a static IP address for the router with the ISP....

 My apologies: The static routing hyperlink I included in my first post was inappropriate and misleading in the context of this thread. Your understandable query about "a static IP address for the router with the ISP" is therefore a red herring. 

To clarify things: The network setting on the server device usually described as either the "default route" or "gateway" is illustrated by the following screenshot:

....in this Ubuntu Linux demo screenshot, 192.168.1.20 represents the chosen static IPv4 address of the server PC, 255.255.255.0 represents the same netmask that the router uses, 192.168.1.1 represents the IPv4 address of the router and 8.8.4.4 is one of the 2 possible addresses of Google's public DNS (the alternative choice could have been 8.8.8.8). In this demo Google public DNS is preferred to ISP DNS. In this demo the DHCP range managed by the router is 192.168.1.64 to 192.168.1.254.

Good luck!

Final update

Are you aware of the existence of the CUPS connector alternative to GCP? It is more complex to set up but it allows you to "share printers from your Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or OSX computer with ChromeOS and Android devices". I far prefer it as it is much quicker in operation* (typical LAN print speed) and I never need to print from a remote location via the internet. Obviously I have also assigned a static IP address to my CUPS connector server for the reasons I have mentioned already. I now use this type of server for all Chromebook/Chromebox printing. When I am satisfied that printing from Android is equally successful (at the moment I am not), I will have no need for any other type of classic printer server for ChromeOS and Android devices.

* In addition, the printers installed on the server are discoverable and selectable in "Local destinations" in the "Select a destination" dialogue from any Google account and from any ChromeOS device on the same LAN subnet, e.g.

...It couldn't be simpler. This dialogue box appears if you initiate the "Print" dialogue in Chrome and click on "Change" (Destination). The selected printer will be remembered next time unless you forget to switch the print server on first in which case the destination will revert back to "Save as PDF". You won't have to worry about printer registration or sharing unless you choose the option to add in GCP support.