Archive for July, 2007

I ran into this problem for the first time when I tried to configure a laptop running Windows XP to print to my Samsung ML-1710 printer connected to a Linux box on the network. I wanted to set this up without the added headache of using samba since I don't need any of samba's advanced functionality. I turned on error reporting and found that after I had added the networked printer in Windows XP the CUPS server was rejecting jobs based on my user name. This was the error message:

Everything I found online said to edit printers.conf and explicitly add the denied user to the list with AllowUser sedowler. I didn't like that solution. I tried adding AllowUser All, but that didn't work. I commented out all of the lines that began with AllowUser and restarted CUPS, and now it works as expected allow anyone to print no matter their user name.

I think there used to be a directive AllowUser All, but maybe it's been removed, or is a bug. I didn't ever explicitly add any of the AllowUser lines, I think the CUPS server automatically added users from Linux machines on the network when they tried to print, but for some reason didn't do that when printing from the Windows XP machine. That's the only explanation that I can come up with.

If you need more step by step instructions for configuring a Windows machine to print to a CUPS networked printer, try these instructions.

Today I was going to get a stationary exercise bike. Everything was all set. A woman named Julie said she would be picking one up from her mother-in-law today and that she would contact me about it. I didn't check my email until 6:30pm. She had already got the bike and tried to contact me to get me to come and get it. Unfortunately, when I called the bike had already been given to someone else. That's the thing about freecycling. You have to be fast.

I have never ever gotten anything through freecycling, because I'm never fast enough. Whenever I contact people they say that the item is already gone. It's a great concept if you are looking to get something for nothing, but it's even better for the one who is trying to give their items away. You can generally expect someone to be by in less than 24 hours to pick up whatever you might have to give away.

I must admit that I was more than a little bummed that I didn't get the bike I had been waiting for, but at least it didn't cost me anything anyway.