Can not access CUPS Administration
 

Hi,

I am running Ubuntu 11.10. I am trying to setup a new printer but when I go to localhost:631/admin it won't let me enter any of the options. CUPS does not ask me for a username and password. If I click on any of the menu items in the admin page it just reverts back to the same page.

I have uninstalled and re-installed cups several times to try and correct the problem, but no change. I even did a complete system re-install in case there was a configuration file somewhere that I had missed.

I have another computer, with the same operating system, on the same network that can acess the printer with no problems.

I'm stumped. Does anyone have any ideas?

Did you try
without anything else? Maybe by entering the admin page, you skipped login...

Thor

That is exactly the point. The login dialogue doesn't show up when I attempt any of the admin functions. I am assuming that is why I can't make changes. So how do I change that?

I asume you're not in some root account but in a daily account...

You might try these ideas (off the top of my head: I don't know much about Ubuntu):

1. Don't use CUPS: use the Ubuntu printer configuration tool.

2. Open a terminal and do "sudo bash" followed by "firefox" (or whatever you use) and then try accessing CUPS.

@Thor

I have tried opening CUPS both ways, as a user and by starting Firefox with sudo. Still can't get in. The way CUPS should work is that anytime you want to do Admin functions it will ask for your username and password, but on this machine it doesn't.

@David

The Ubuntu printer config. tool doesn't do much. As far as I can tell it only lets your system know there is a printer connected to the network. AFAIK you have to use CUPS to to actually do any configuration, set up default options, etc. This is absolutely necessary in my case as I do most of my printing from LibreOffice. Unfortunately, LO and its predecessor OpenOffice has a bug in it that the developers haven't gotten around to fixing yet. LO uses the printer defaults to print, i.e. you can't change them from the printer dialogue in LO. The only workaround I know for this is to set up two or more instances of the same printer, each one configured with a preferred set of options. It makes for a lot of work but at least you can print something the way you want. But you have to do all that using CUPS, hence the headache I am experiencing.

Any other ideas will be welcome. Thanks for your help so far.

Waitwaitwaitwait....

Just a flash...you're running the Cusp Daemon (cupsd), so you're in escence running a webserver. Are you "belssed" with more than one box? If so, try to access that machine ans see if you can get on to the cups page. Look up the processlist, I suspect cupsd to be in there.
The conf file is set up so the web interface has restricted access. In the conf file (typically /etc/cups/cupsd.conf), try to edit it, this should be in there:

Restart the server, you know how:
Let's see where this thing lands...

Thor

Hi Thor,

I am unsure exactly where the lines of code you suggested should go in the file. Here is my /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. I have compared the same file from both machines and they are identical, except one works and the other doesn't.

Hi, does this group exist on the faulty box?
Try this, add the lines (in red) to the section

And restart the service...by now, you know how ;)

Thor

Hi Thor,

Yes, lpadmin is a valid group on both machines and I am a member of it.

I added those two lines, that you suggested, to the cupsd.conf file on the machine that doesn't work and then restarted, but unfortunately I still can't access the cups admin functions.

Thx for your patience and help in dealing with this problem.

Dont worry, this is fun for me (seriously) :)
Let's hope we get to a result...

By the way, how did the tips of DavidMcCann (post 5) work out?
Lemme meditate, please...

Thor

Maybe look in the logs ?

/var/log/cups/access_log
/var/log/cups/error_log

(The logs may be elsewhere in Ubuntu, I use Slackware...)

Hi Cedrik,

Here is the cups access log which seems to indicate no problem (although there is):

And here is the cups error log which is saying something about a dbus problem:

I reinstalled dbus but that didn't make any difference. The log says it is possibly a network connection problem, but I can ping the printer successfully, and I have replaced the cable just to be sure, but still no joy.

Could you try to :
go to http://localhost:631/admin
click on add printer
click on view access log and error log

Just to see if something change

Also, did you try different web browsers to access cups ?

There were no changes in the logs when I tried to add printer.

Ahaa, when I tried to access admin functions from Chromium I got the proper request for username and password. Does this mean there is something in Firefox that is screwed up?