cups ppd files

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Jeff Vian wrote:
>
>>> To me it is just one more piece of evidence
>>> that whoever wrote this program did not think carefully enough
>>> about what precisely the program is meant to do.
>>>
>> They did think carefully.  The present usage handles probably at least
>> 99+% of all cases.
>
> Do you mean that system-config-printer sets up a printer correctly
> in > 99% of cases?
> Where do you get your figures from?
>
> I have what I take to be a pretty standard system -
> printer attached to the parallel port on my desktop,
> and accessed from various laptops and other computers -
> and none of the printer wizards has _ever_ worked for me
> on any machine except the desktop itself.

I have the same setup and system-config-printer works fine for me.  (I use 
lpd to print from my Windows machines, though).

So from the sample so far, system-config-printer works fine for at least 
50% of such basic setups 8^).

>
> The CUPS web interface on port 631 always works,
> although the documentation is not very good, IMHO.
>
> Even the Windows XP wizard works reasonably well.
>
>> The present config ensures that anyone running these programs (with
>> default paths/permissions) has root authority, and makes sure that the
>> program itself does not have to be SUID root.  SUID root was the earlier
>> configuration, and is a security risk.
>
> That seems perfectly sensible to me.
> But I don't see why it requires you to have two different programs
> with the same name.

I don't really get this either.  All of the system-config utilities in 
/usr/bin are symlinked to consolehelper.  Many have no /usr/sbin 
counterpart.  Yet they seem to start just fine when invoked as root.

My guess is that the /usr/sbin ones are artifacts of a pre-consolehelper 
era and could be removed with no ill effects.

/usr/bin/system-config-authentication
/usr/bin/system-config-date
/usr/bin/system-config-display
/usr/bin/system-config-keyboard
/usr/bin/system-config-language
/usr/bin/system-config-lvm
/usr/bin/system-config-network
/usr/bin/system-config-network-cmd
/usr/bin/system-config-printer
/usr/bin/system-config-printer-gui
/usr/bin/system-config-printer-tui
/usr/bin/system-config-rootpassword
/usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel
/usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel-tui
/usr/bin/system-config-services
/usr/bin/system-config-soundcard
/usr/bin/system-config-time
/usr/bin/system-config-users
/usr/sbin/system-config-authentication
/usr/sbin/system-config-lvm
/usr/sbin/system-config-network
/usr/sbin/system-config-network-cmd
/usr/sbin/system-config-network-gui
/usr/sbin/system-config-network-tui
/usr/sbin/system-config-printer
/usr/sbin/system-config-printer-gui
/usr/sbin/system-config-printer-tui
/usr/sbin/system-config-services


-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs