CUPS "forgetting" root password?
CUPS "forgetting" root password?
CUPS (accessible via a Web interface: http://127.0.0.1:631/printers), Mac OS X's built-in printing architecture, will not allow you to access printer settings unless a root account is enabled with a password. The solution, of course, is to enable a root account either through NetInfo Manager or the Terminal.
However, MacFixIt reader Mathue Taxion found that -- in some cases -- CUPS may not recognize the root password, or the root password may be deleted entirely for some reason.
"Well, in my case I had enabled root long before before the 10.3 update (or the CUPS update around 10.2.4), and could even switch users with fast user switching. However, it appears that as far as CUPS was concerned the password for root was blank! So I went through the whole authorization of root again. Oddly, the password was BLANK! Setting a password again solved the CUPS issue, and no doubt secured my machine again, which had I not probed a bit more to find out why I was having trouble I'd still have a WIDE open machine.
"I checked two of my other OSX machines and lo and behold they too had blank root passwords. I don't know how to explain why this would be since they most certainly did have a root password when I enabled it. Just to confirm I logged into one of my supposedly passworded machines and I indeed didn't need to use the password for root."
"Needless to say I'll be checking root and it's password from time to time now."
There is another option for CUPS administration -- a patch that will allow any user to perform modifications without authentication.
As the author of the patch describes "This should not cause any problems for the vast majority of the users who run a single computer environment. Such users just want to be able to use the web interface of CUPS for administrative tasks such as setting up a serial printer. For those that have already installed the patch, you may want to uninstall the patch. This may be important to you if you are in a network situation or otherwise want the full security of a username and password."
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