[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#616718: cups: Attempting to add a printer gives a forbidden error

[Brian Potkin]

On Wed 21 Mar 2012 at 13:52:55 -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Brian Potkin wrote:
> 
> > Now you try again. The first stage is not repeated because PAM is to be
> > trusted and would get upset if CUPS kept querying its decisions. Which
> > is why you do not get the dialogue box back. CUPS already knows your
> > status regarding group membership so just keeps pointing to the sign it
> > displayed previously. Get a new cookie and it will reconsider.
> >
> > From the information given #616718 is almost certainly not a bug.
> 
> What?  From a user experience point of view, the operator is trapped.
> The "Forbidden" message should at least have some text to explain how
> to work around this.

I can understand your point. Warning/error messages often leave a lot to
be desired but in this case it is really something to be addressed by
upstream. Debian could help with a README.Debian mentioning the lpadmin
group but you know as well as I do what the form is there when it comes
to writing it.

I've not looked at the source code (and wouldn't understand it if I did)
but can understand what I think is the rationale behind the behaviour.
Cups knows all it needs to know about the user and there is nothing to
be gained by going through the whole thing again.

The 'Forbidden' message came as a result of the design of CUPS. In that
sense it is not a bug, unless the implementation is lacking. The easy
fix, of course, is lpadmin membership.

Cheers,

Brian.