small progress, no help so far with cups

[Daniel Pittman]

Rob Blomquist <rob.blomquist at verizon.net> writes:
> On Wednesday 27 September 2006 03:58, Gene Heskett wrote:

[...]

> I can't find it now, but there was a help page that got me set up
> right. I had to install Gutenprint and some other utils that were
> necessry for my printer, but not in the main install. The number one
> pain I have with Ubuntu is that the web-configuration utility is
> broken in Ubuntu due to how they do the root less security.
>
> You can not use the localhost:631 to configure your printer. It is
> hopeless!
>
> You must use either the command line, or the KDE or Gnome printor
> tool, and be sure to set administrator privledges.

Actually, you /can/ use it, but it requires some non-standard settings.

The quick-start guide is:

  ] sudo adduser cupsys shadow
  ] sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys stop
  ] sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys start

Now, go for your life with the local HTML administrative tools.  

Use a local user login that is a member of lpadmin, of course.

You should also be aware that you just gave the cupsys code the rights
to check passwords for everyone, which in turn means that it is a
potentially remotely exploitable path to guessing your passwords.

> Why the Ubuntu folks have decided to break some of the better things
> about certain linux programs, I have no idea. I have been with linux
> for 6 years, and Ubuntu is partly the easiest, and partly the hardest
> I have ever worked with.

Security, in this case, in that it radically reduces the number of
pieces of software that handle data from arbitrary local (or remote)
users, and which have access to the password database.

Also, convenience, because the HTML interface isn't a nice way to
administer the CUPS system compared to the GUI tools, for most users.

Regards,
        Daniel
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