I've always run as root on Slackware, but having done away with Ubuntu for now, all of my machines including the family desktop are running Slackware. There have been several ups and downs and the last one that I know of (for now) is the HP Device Manager. It doesn't run as root so I've never noticed that it drastically slows down printing via a shared printer. Disabled the system just sends it's requests to the samba/cups server and starts printing instantly. The HP Device Manager seems to go through an intialization step each time that takes several seconds before I can even hit the "print" button.

Sorry about not giving help to your immediate problems but - honestly this is a really bad move! You really should run as a normal user and only go to root when neccesary. Trust me - I don't run as root as that is crazy but I have messed up many systems with su commands. You really should avoid running with root permisions as it's not wise at all. The difference between root and user permissions are there for good reason - you should follow this.

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Most of my time is spent experimenting so it was fine to run as root as only root could do what it was I was doing. Now however, I need a daily use machine and I'm trying to learn better user management. This HP thing though is just getting in my way.

Just a stab in the dark here - would it have anything to do with name resolution on the network, with names being resolved by broadcast rather than DNS or WINS? If it's just a small home network try putting the name and IP address of each computer in your hosts file, and set Samba in smb.conf to consult your hosts file before DNS or WINS or broadcast. If that solves the problem consider using a local DNS server or keep your hosts files on all machines updated. If you have Windows machines on the network set Samba to act as a Wins server and on your MS machines specify the Samba server as your WINS server (IP configuration | Advanced tab).

And I second bgeddy's advice - when I started using Linux I tended to do everything as root. It's a bad idea. Permissions tend to go astray when you install from source and such. Get into the habit of doing things as a normal user. You'll have less trouble. Su or sudo when you need elevated permissions.

The HP Device Manager scans and initalizes. Printing via samba/cups works just fine. I have all 4 machines in /etc/hosts. The HP Device Manager seems to override the cups settings and I have to wait for it to do what seems like a handshake with the printer before I can hit the "print" button.

All warnings regarding running as root are noted, and I understand, and yes I've borked a system running as root, and yes I am trying to learn proper user/permission management.

Agreed. Running as root all the time is a bad move. damgar, you should run as a regular user and give your regular user administration privileges only as needed (security patches, software updates).

I AM RUNNING AS A REGULAR USER! That's what causes the problem. The HP device manager doesn't run as root, so it's never been a problem. I just need help finding the stupid program so I can chmod -x it so that I can CONTINUE TO RUN AS A REGULAR USER WITHOUT GOING CRAZY!!

"ARGH!"
-Charlie Brown

LOL

hplip?

In XFce in settings---->Session and startup there is an application Autostart section where the HP System Tray Service is activated at startup by default. Maybe KDE has something like this as well. I un-check this in XFce. Have you done that?

If it is hplip (I haven't understood the question), it's under

I have removed mine so it doesn't start on boot.

I renamed hplip-systray.desktop in /etc/xdg/autostart/, but I'm not sure that's going to do what I'm looking for. This install is a little complicated due to the presence of gnome and gdm. My four year old is used to Gnome so it was a requirement. I'm going have to do a little experimenting to get this right I think. I don't have the problems in my kde sessions, but the gnome users do.

The binary you are looking for is /usr/share/hplip/toolbox.py