Bug 107306 – lppasswd: Unable to open passwd file: Permission denied

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Eric Pretorious 2005-09-26 11:31:49 UTC]

When trying to add a user to the CUPS digest password file
(/etc/cups/passwd.md5) lppasswd complains:

  lppasswd: Unable to open passwd file: Permission denied

I created the passwd file.
I'm running lppasswd as root.
I've even made world-writable.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create the passwd file:
 %> touch /etc/cups/passwd.md5
2. Use lppasswd to add a user to the digest passwd file:
 %> lppasswd -a foobar
Actual Results:  
lppasswd: Unable to open passwd file: Permission denied

Expected Results:  
Digest passwd file *should* have been updated with new user info.

[Comment 1 Eric Pretorious 2005-09-26 11:47:48 UTC]

/usr/bin/lppasswd is *supposed*to*be* SUID root but it is owned by the user
'lp'. As a temporary solution:

 %> chown root /usr/bin/lppasswd

I'm assuming that this was done as a security feature. If that's the case: Would
it be possible to patch lppasswd to correctly report the actual problem?

[Comment 2 Stefan Schweizer (RETIRED) 2006-02-06 05:04:15 UTC]

well, I kindly accept patches - but I guess I have to read up on suid-stuff to fix this properly. Or maybe ask upstream :)

[Comment 3 Stefan Schweizer (RETIRED) 2006-06-01 10:58:16 UTC]

in cups-1.2.1 /etc/cups is lp:lp - that fixes this bug :)

thanks for reporting