Authentication required to modify a printer- what's the password?

Question

I have 12.04 and have 2 printers installed, both wirelessly over my personal network, no printer sharing. When I try to modify the printers I get a window asking for authentication (username and password). For the life of me I cannot think what these might be. At first I thought it might be my Ubuntu account username and password, but I can't get it to work. The printer username and password (admin and access) doesn't work either.

Does anyone know what it is asking for, and how I can turn that off?

Many thanks.

Solution 1

You might be affected by this bug.

Try running

gksudo system-config-printer

in a terminal window, then setting up the printer

However, if gksudo is not found, try:

sudo -H system-config-printer

Solution 2

Adding my username to the lpadmin group, as suggested by msanderz, worked for me. Here is how you add yourself to the group:

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin YOUR_USERNAME

Comments

[Uli]

try the username & password which was set up first (when installing Ubuntu)

[That Brazilian Guy]

Tried in Ubuntu 12.4.2 and it works. Thanks!

[raphie]

Tried in Ubuntu 13.10 and it works too.

[hal_v]

I've tried that with the following results:-

[hal_v]

Sorry these results:-(system-config-printer:3620): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 07:26:04.797: gtk_tree_store_insert_after: assertion 'G_NODE (sibling->user_data)->parent == G_NODE (parent->user_data)' failed (system-config-printer:3620): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 07:26:04.797: gtk_tree_store_set_value: assertion 'VALID_ITER (iter, tree_store)' failed (system-config-printer:3620): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 07:26:04.797: gtk_tree_store_set_value: assertion 'VALID_ITER (iter, tree_store)' failed