What's best way to manage cups configuration? (Re: [Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#343566: cupsys: /etc/cups/cups.d/ports.conf contains errornous string after upgrade.)

[Christopher Martin]

On Tuesday 20 December 2005 15:28, Martin Pitt wrote:
> No, it is a pain, because cupsd.conf is a big conffile that gets
> changed in cups from time to time. No need to bother users with dpkg
> questions if they only changed Ports/Listen parameters.
>
> Packages should not modify conffiles of other packages, i. e. kprint
> modify /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. They may, however, change other package's
> configuration files, so splitting out these settings into separate
> files actually helps these packages.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making here. In any case, 
kprinter configures CUPS by modifying /etc/cups/cupsd.conf; it can alter 
many settings, including those related to Port and Browsing. Now that these 
the Port and Browsing settings have been split out, trying to configure 
CUPS using kprinter results in an error, where kprinter complains about 
unknown items "include", and decides to leave them to be safe. The problem 
is that if you use kprinter to configure CUPS, you will wind up two sets of 
Port/Browsing settings; one in cupsd.conf (put there by kprinter), and one 
from the included files. If this works at all, it will cause user confusion 
about which setting to change, leading them to think they may be making 
CUPS secure when it isn't, overriding the settings they think they set with 
debconf, etc. In other words, this change has made kprinter broken and 
dangerous.

Cheers,
Christopher Martin

Please CC me on all replies.
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