[cups.general] cups config problem - please

[John]

HELP
The printer has stopped working.
If I access the print functions I get loads of error messages that boil down 
to cups not being able to access cupsd.conf file. It's now set to be owned by 
user lp of group lp. It was root before and worked ok like that. It seems to 
have changed itself following a reboot for a kmail problem. How can a piece 
of software access it's config file and then change it so that it can't 
access it anymore? That question is in despair. There is no answer to it. 
What I really want to know is how do I fix it?

permissions on file also show user - read write, group - read.

regards
john