Why do I need to be Superuser to enable or disable printers?
 

I am using Fedora Core release 2, Kernel 2.6.10-1.8. The only way I can enable or disable printers is to become superuser and give the entire path of the command: /usr/bin/enable Printer-name. If I try it just as myself, it asks for a password, but won't accept my login password. I assume that I have permissions set incorrectly, but I don't know where.

Thanks in advance for your assistance,


Still LostInFog

Thats because a printer is a system device and you have to have root permissions to make changes to that device. This is part of the Linux and Unix security model because they are multiuser operating systems.

Your distro should have an option (probably buried in the documentation--in my experience, you tend to find the documentation about a day or two after you figure it out the hard way) to enable the printers on boot. Just about every distro does this, so I imagine you didn't set up your printer during the initial install. Still, fedora has some of the most prolific documentation available to Linux users, so your best bet is to google like crazy. I'd offer the slackware solution, but that would probably make it harder than it needs to be. You might want to search the fedora/redhat distribution-specific parts of LQ.

As for the multi-user argument, yes, that's the reason, but that doesn't mean there is no other option. If it bugs a relatively new user, you can bet your tail that it has bugged someone else in the past. That's the nice thing about LQ, the give and take for those little problems that aren't really problems, just a different way of looking at things. After 8+ years of using Linux, I still enjoy "newbie" help sites, because sometimes when you've used a system for a while, you don't realize that there are new, better ways of doing things.

I think everyone here, that's contributed over the years, can agree. We learn as much from the newbies as they learn from us. Actually, I think we learn more... :)

I gotta agree with you about participating on newbie sites. I have used Linux for a while but always learn something new when I participate in forums such as this one. A good way to run configuration utilities is to use the sudo command, just give yourself permission to run the application without a password. Ubuntu does this but for the whole system, but I believe it's safer to do it just for a few individual apps.

Thanks for the help
 

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It is reassuring to have a place to get assistance from smarter and more experienced Linux users.

Thanks again,

A Little Less LostInFog