Printing with Cups 1.2.1 and KDE 3.5.3

Hi all,

by changing the permissions of the printer device (/dev/usb/lp0 in my case), I 
managed to get printing to work with cups 1.2.1 and KDE 3.5.3. I used chmod 
666 on /dev/usb/lp0 to get things going (it was 660 before).

My current system is a clean installation of crystal-th20060624.iso (latest 
test build), with cups updated from 1.2.0 to 1.2.1. My (local) printer is a 
Canon S400, connected via USB.

Some quirks in the printer module/manager of the KDE 3.5.3 Control Center 
(note none of these appear in my installation of crystal-vanilla-r7663.iso, 
based on cups 1.1.23 and KDE 3.5.2, except #5):

1) When adding the first printer, it does not immediately show up in the list 
of printers, but the manager has to be initialized again.

2) When no printer is available and the module is started, the message 
box "Initializing manager..." can be seen, followed by the error message:
	"Unable to retrieve the printer list. Error message received from manager:
	Connection to CUPS server failed. Check that the CUPS server is correctly 		
installed and running. Error: the IPP request failed for an unknown reason."

3) In administrator mode, when the printer manager is initialized, the message 
above becomes:
	"Unable to retrieve the printer list. Error message received from manager:
	Connection to CUPS server failed. Check that the CUPS server is correctly 
installed and running. Error: host not found."

4) Using the administrator mode of the printer manager, it doesn't seem 
possible to add printers. The error message I get is:
	"Unable to create printer. Error message received from manager:
	client-error-bad-request"

It is most likely related to this line from the cups error log 
in /var/log/cups/error_log:

	E [30/Jun/2006:19:12:34 +0200] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer 
client-error-bad-request: The printer-uri must be of the 
form "ipp://HOSTNAME/printers/PRINTERNAME".

5) In administrator mode, when setting a pseudo-printer as the user default, 
one is asked to confirm that choice, and even if one chooses "Cancel" at this 
point, the setting is still made. o_O KDE 3.5.2 with cups 1.1.23 behaves the 
same, however.

Bottom Line:
---------------

I suggest to stay with cups 1.1.23 at least for our next release. It "simply 
works" with KDE, while especially the inability to add system-wide printers 
via the administrator mode of the KDE printer module and cups 1.2.1 feels 
like a real bug.
Note that I have only tested cups 1.1.23 + KDE 3.5.2 vs. cups 1.2.1 + KDE 
3.5.3. However I expect KDE 3.5.3 to work with cups 1.1.23 as well as the 
previous version did.

When switching to Cups 1.2.x, we should use another restriction for printer 
devices (e.g. /dev/usb/lp0) than 666 root:root. I just haven't tried what 
else works.

With best regards,
	Stefan Fiedler

-- 
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win. 
  Mohandas Gandhi