Adding Printers

From a usability perspective, especially non enterprise users, no passwords should be required to add printers to a system. To some degree this type of security makes sense in the enterprise, but is nonsense to the home and non enterprise user.

Linus Torvalds ranted about this practice. I would not try to compare my skills to somebody like Linus, but there is some degree of comfort when I notice that a blind hog like me finds the same acorns.

I use a simple work-around. I did not originate this approach — just check the web.

Ensure the following file is installed:

/usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.policy

That file is installed with the cups-pk-helper package.

Add the following snippet in a polkit pkla file.

/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/90-configure-printers.pkla

    [Password-less configuration of printers]
    Identity=unix-group:wheel
    Action=org.opensuse.cupspkhelper.mechanism.*
    ResultAny=yes
    ResultInactive=yes
    ResultActive=yes

On some systems replace the wheel group with the adm group. Then ensure the primary user of a system is a member of that administrative group. With many distros the primary user account is already a member of that group.

Such a simple addition that changes the way non technical users perceive Linux systems.

Posted: October 7, 2015 Category: Usability Tagged: General

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