Hi,
At where I work, I am trying to print over a network to a postscript printer. I know the IP address and I know I am allowed to print to that IP address (i.e. it is not restricted to allow only certain connections) and I know which driver to use. I am trying to use cups web interface to configure it. The trouble is that cups asks me for a "username" and "password" and nothing seems to suffice (not my normal user password, or my root password). This is funny because at my home I use cups all the time to configure usb printers. It always asks me for a username and password and my root password always suffices. In fact on the cups web interface at localhost:631 it states "If you are asked for a username and password, enter your login username and password or the "root" username and password." Trouble is that this is just not cutting it at my office.

I googled around for fellow victims. This guy here has the exact same problem as me: http://www.debianhelp.org/node/10942
(his post has more detail than mine, but the problem he has experienced and the solutions he has tried are identical. I suppose the only difference is that while he is using debian-etch, I am using debian-lenny. Don't think that should matter though).

There is an IT group specifically for my department at work. I told them my problem and they just shrugged me off. Basically, as I use linux, they could care less about my problems and will only deal with the windows machines. They did assure me though that there is no in principle problem about a linux machine printing to the printer in question.

So I'm stumped. Perhaps there is a way around this, using some print manager or just writing to some config files that will sidestep the password problem.

anybody got a clue for me?

-mark



ps. I was not sure how to classify this problem: could be debian-specific or could be more general, i.e. about cups or network printing generally

How are you attempting to use cups to setup the connection to the printer??? Which cups device??? Details please.

Also see: http://localhost:631/help/network.html

Thanks for the reply.

My printer is available at a IP address (128.40.26.158) inside my department. I can ping it without a problem. I can even ftp into it, and simply press enter for username and enter for password. So in that case, I presume the printer is ready and willing to allow me to print using the usual lp type commands. All I have to do is add this printer to cups config files so that I use a command like e.g. "lp -d hplaserjet file.ps" to print. To attempt this I do what I thought was the normal procedure to configure a printer using cups (this is the procedure I use to configure locally attached usb printers): With my browser I go to localhost:631, and press "add printer", I enter a name, location and description for the printer. This leads to the Device to choose page, where I have a drop down menu and on that menu there is the printer I want to choose labelled as
"HP Laserjet 4050 series 128.40.26.158 (Hp Laserjet 4050 series)". So I choose this and go on to choose a driver, and the default choice of "HP Laserjet 4050 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.1 (en)" seems perfect. I now press the "Add printer" and get a typical browser username/password dialog box asking me for a username and password. But no password that I know of will fly.

Like I said, when I am configuring a attached usb printer on my home computer, my root password always works, so I do not know what it wants from me.

-mark

Just use you local system to configure a new printer, Select the AppSocket/HP-JetDirect, then use something like socket://128.40.26.158:9100

Continue on configuring the printer after that.

thanks, I'll try that.
-mark

I'm running kubuntu (I like it, mostly), and I know that it's based on debian so .....
Kubuntu will not let me use http://localhost:631 because of exactly the password issue you refer to (nothing is acceptable to it).
I have to configure my printer with System Settings -> Printers, click on the Administrator Mode button and provide my password (My username is a member of the admin group, so I can do this). Then it's as easy as the cups interface I was used to.

I think that another way to get the cups http://localhost:631 to work for you is to set a password for root like this sudo passwd root
Once you have given root a password, you can then tell cups you are root and give root's password, but I did not need to do this, because I got the printer working the kubuntu/ debian way.
Hope this helps.

My memory may be playing tricks on me, but...

... I think that, in the initial config file for CUPS, the default password may be set to 'secret' . ( I'm pretty sure it was either CUPS or wwwoffle)

You can use the "lppasswd" program and add a user & password. It works like "smbpasswd". Previously on SuSE 10.0, I believe, the lp user was used instead of root. I used "lppasswd" to add my own username and password.

Also, you might look into the hplip package.

thanks for all the help. I'm away from my work place this week so can't try out the suggestions for a few dats. Just as a note though, for tredegar, I do have a real root password (you always set one up in pure debian, while ubuntu prefers to avoid it in favour of sudo), but that wasn't sufficient for cups manager. For jschiwal, I also set up a username and password with lppasswd. You'd think that would hit the nail on the head, but alas it did not work. Still, there are more things to try, and thanks everyone for the help. I will post back if and when I get it working.

-mark

Post back even if you don't