Help with cups 1.2.7 under OSX?

[Aaron Howell]

> In article <27665-cups.general at news.easysw.com>,
>  Aaron Howell <aaron at kitten.net.au> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > I've made rather a mess of the printer setup on an OSX 10.4.8 box and would
> > like some help to fix it if possible.
> > I upgraded to cups 1.2.7, by downloading the .dmg file and installing the
> > resultant package from the cups website.
> > This replaced the standard OSX installation of cups.
> > I can print locally just fine (as I could before), however, something about
> > the setup of the new cups (perhaps the config file syntax)? has upset Apple's
> > system preferences to the point where I can no longer enable printer sharing.
> > The checkbox refuses to change state,
> > and the console reports the following error.
> > 2006-11-22 23:06:21.501 writeconfig[268] Printer Sharing 'set' Error:
> > ffffffff
> > While this in itself is not too serious, (I could edit cupsd.conf by hand),
> > it leads to a more serious issue, in that if OSX thinks printer sharing is
> > turned off, then it won't let you enable cups traffic through the firewall.
> > This one I can't fix on my own, at least, not without having it reset on a
> > frequent basis when someone goes into system preferences.
> > Does anyone have any idea how to fool system preferences into allowing me to
> > enable printer sharing and hence the firewall change?
> > I would be most appreciative of any help, as right now my fiance is very
> > angry with me for breaking her Mac. :(
>
>
>
> The cups configuration file (/etc/cups/cupsd.conf) for CUPS 1.2.x is
> significantly different than the configuration file that Apple uses for
> version 1.1.23 that ships with OS 10.4.x.  When you try to enable
> printer sharing via the Preference Pane, the OS tries to write the
> necessary changes to the cupsd.conf file and modifies the firewall
> (ipfw) rules.  It then restarts the CUPS daemon.  I don't know the exact
> mechanism that Apple uses to write the changes to the cupsd.conf file.
> Obviously, the Console is telling you that it couldn't make the changes.
>
> At this point, you have two choices.  You can manually make the changes
> to the cupsd.conf file and the firewall rules to allow printer sharing.
> If you plan to toggle this on and off, you could make some shell scripts
> to do this for you.  The only other alternative is to do an Archive and
> Install of OS 10.4 and use CUPS version 1.1.23 that ships with Tiger if
> you want to use the Apple GUI.
Well, this has been an OSX learning experience.
i know now how to manually manage cupsd.conf and the OSX firewall without resorting to the gui tools (plutil is my friend).
Apart from a niggling problem where one of the filters is failing with SIGABRT every now and then (for which I haven't yet figured out why), it all basicly works the way it should.
Thanks for the confirmation that you do have to do things by hand though... hopefully this will all get fixed in Leopard.