How do I set a cups-shared printer as the default printer using lpadmin?

[jaimet]

I have an old HP1100 (parallel-connect!) connected to an old laptop that I am using as a printer server. I have the drivers installed on that printer server and when I ssh into the printer server, I can print to that printer perfectly. All is good:

user@server:~$ lpstat -a
laser accepting requests since Fri 22 Jul 2022 16:50:33 BST
user@server:~$ lp -d laser file.pdf # Success!

I set cups on that printer server to share the printer, and from my main computer I can see it and print to it perfectly too. All is still good:

user@client:~$ lpstat -e
laser_server
user@client:~$ lp -d laser_server file.pdf # Still success!

On my main computer, I have no default printer:

user@client:~$ lpstat -d
no system default destination

So I try to add the network-detected printer as the default:

user@client:~$ sudo lpadmin -d laser_server
lpadmin: The printer or class does not exist.

Ok, let's try by specifying its local name (to the print server) along with the name of the print server:

user@client:~$ sudo lpadmin -h server -d laser
lpadmin: Forbidden

Should I specify a username with sufficient authority?:

user@client:~$ sudo lpadmin -U root -h server -d laser
lpadmin: Forbidden

How do other people achieve this?

FWIW, both printer server and main computer are running Debian stable with cups version 2.3.3op2-3+deb11u2. (I understand that debian stable has a comparatively old version, but surely this must still be achieveable, no?)

[michaelrsweet]

Use the lpoptions command to set a default remote printer, e.g.:

lpoptions -d printer

[zdohnal]

@michaelrsweet unfortunately it doesn't work - meaning you can set the temp queue pointing to a shared remote queue:

$ lpstat -a
lpstat: No destinations added.
$ lpstat -e
hp_fedora
test2_fedora
$ lpstat -t
scheduler is running
system default destination: test2_fedora
...

but printing to it doesn't work:

$ lp -P 25 ~/cslh-pravidla2018-22-web.pdf 
lp: Error - ~/.cups/lpoptions file names default destination that does not exist.

It happens because we use _cupsGetDests(), which sends get-printer-attributes to ipp://localhost:631/printers/<name>, which doesn't exist for temp queue, so it fails, and further down we check only name variable, which is NULL in case of default printer, in cupsGetNamedDest().

To sum it up, we don't look on network when using default printer...