Use your CUPS
The end of another hectic week - I have been on so many customer calls I have lost count - but they have raised some good questions which I can turn into blog articles so there were some good benefits for all parties. One such was this morning. Those of you using the standalone/BIEE release will know that we communicate with printers via Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) - typically using CUPS or a windows print server. Not news anymore but so many of you have your printers set up as network printers and they work - so that old adage applies, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.
I was talking to just such a customer this morning, they have installed BIP on its own server but were concerned about installing and administering CUPS - they were not allowed root access to the server so if CUPS required it to administer printers, it would be a showstopper!
Kei, from our development team to the rescue ... you can configure the CUPS server to use a non-root enabled user to administer the printers and fax servers.
- Create an OS user 'guest', set the password.
- Open cupsd.conf and go to <Location /admin> section
- Add a line "Require user guest" in there.
- Restart the CUPS server
Here's the detail.
http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/ref-cupsd-conf.html
and whats required in the cups.conf file
--- cupsd.conf
<Location /admin>
#
# You definitely will want to limit access to the administration functions.
# The default configuration requires a local connection from a user who
# is a member of the system group to do any admin tasks. You can change
# the group name using the SystemGroup directive.
#
AuthType Basic
#AuthClass System
#AuthClass User
Require user guest
Cooll stuff this CUPS!
