[cups.development] [RFE] STR #3081: Better Kerberos-related error messages for shell user commands

[John A. Murdie]

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[STR New]

A recurring problem at my site is that users leave themselves logged on
after the working day, and return to the system to find that shell user
commands such as lp(1), lpq(1) and lpr(1) etc seem to have 'broken':

$ lpq -P cp04
lpq: Unknown destination "cp04"!
$

The problem is, of course, that their Kerberos credentials have expired -
we set them to do so after ten hours. The solution to this problem is for
the user to re-authenticate - or to remember to log out before they go
home and log in again next day! - but a more informative error message
would be appreciated e.g.

$ lpq -Pcp04
lpq: your Kerberos credentials have expired - please reauthenticate.

or, if you can tell that the user has no authority, but not why:

$ lpq -Pcp04
lpq: no valid Kerberos credentials - might they have expired?
$

I stop short of requesting an essay of an error message which explains the
issue and suggests corrective action. That's more a matter for user
education, I think; one of the suggested messages above should be enough
to put the user on the right track.

John A. Murdie

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L3081
Version:  -feature