[SOLVED] How to permit "normal" user to add printer

mfoley · 02-01-2016, 01:30 PM

I have a Ubuntu workstation in the office for use by normal (non-technical) users and therefore their userID(s) do not have sudo privilege.

However, I do want to let these users add printers. When they try, the "Add" button is grayed-out, presumably waiting for the "Unlock" button to be clicked. When clicked, they get the message"Privileges are requred to change printer settings." How can I remove this restriction for printer settings? Seems rather silly to not let users configure their own printers -- what is this, Windows!?

MensaWater · 02-01-2016, 02:19 PM

Are these CUPS printers? You can grant access to the CUPS admin page in browser (URL = <hostname>:631)

Here we modified the line in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf where it had:

Code:

# Administrator user group...
SystemGroup sys root

To instead have:

Code:

# Administrator user group...
SystemGroup sys root lpadmin

We then added users to the lpadmin group. Anyone in that group can manage via the browser.

mfoley · 02-01-2016, 07:46 PM

I don't have that in my cupsd.conf. Mine has @SYSTEM used all over, e.g.:

Code:

# All administration operations require an administrator to authenticate...
  <Limit CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer CUPS-Delete-Printer CUPS-Add-Modify-Class CUPS-Delete-Class CUPS-Set-Default CUPS-Get-Dev$
    AuthType Default  
    Require user @SYSTEM
    Order deny,allow  
  </Limit>

Ant idea where that is defined? I tried changing all instances of "@SYSTEM" to "users @SYSTEM", but no luck.

The app 'Unlock' button says "Dialog is locked. Click to make changes". After clicking, the entire error message is "Privileges are required to change printer settings. This should only be needed from the Printers system settings panel." So, I think I'm in initially getting this error at the Desktop (Cinnamon).

mfoley · 02-03-2016, 12:16 AM

Still could use help on this.

mfoley · 02-07-2016, 10:39 PM

On this particular distribution, the SystemGroup setting is in /etc/cups/cups-files.conf. It has:

SystemGroup lpadmin

I added a particular user to that group and he was then able to add printers. However, it appears that's my only choice. I tried adding additional group to this setting (different tests):

SystemGroup lpadmin users
SystemGroup lpadmin 10000

... and restarting the cups service, but these didn't work. Using 'users' did nothing to enable users in the 'users' group. Using 10000 gave me an error, "Printing service not available ..."

So, unless someone has another suggestion, I suppose my only option is to add users to the lpadmin group.