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I use gnome desktop on Ubuntu 18.04. I want to delete a printer and rename another.

I would like to use the GUI under settings and devices to administer my printers.

Help page advice me to: "Click the Unlock button in the top-right corner and enter your password." But the Unlock button is not active. When hovering the mouse pointer above the button, it tells me that system policy prevents it, and that I should contact my system administrator.

How do I fix this?

I cannot unlock the button under users either. But in "Users Administration Tool" I am set to be administrator.

I found this post 12.04 - Cannot unlock user account although it is an admin account and executed this command:

ps -ef | grep [p]olkit 
root       993     1  0 aug22 ?        00:00:04 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd --no-debug

But I don't know what to look for.

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4
  • I tried to do this using xrdp, as I could not access my gnome desktop locally for some reason. I rename .Xauthority and was now able to access the gnome desktop locally. Now I'm also able to administer both printers and users.
    – Allan Bertelsen
    Aug 23, 2018 at 10:25
  • This is very frustrating and user-hostile. Secure installation of hardware drivers all you want but damn there should be an obvious way to allow it! Stay inside data centers, Ubuntu. :'(
    – skytreader
    Dec 6, 2019 at 9:31
  • I'm having the same locked issue on 20.04.2
    – simgineer
    Jun 4, 2021 at 23:28
  • having the same issue too
    – Atif Ali
    Nov 18, 2021 at 9:19

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
3

Does not exactly cover the problem of this question (disabled unlock button with no obvious way to enable) but for the purposes of adding/deleting/renaming a printer, you could do

me$ sudo su
root$ system-config-printer

(I believe you can straight-up sudo system-config-printer but something in my machine made that not work.)

From the dialog that opens you can right click on existing printers to delete or rename them.

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2
  • Well for me sudo system-config-printer worked. Not the sudo su method.
    – Allan Bertelsen
    May 6, 2020 at 12:31
  • This is not a permanent solution.
    – Atif Ali
    Nov 18, 2021 at 9:19
0

If you have google chrome remote desktop installed, try uninstalling that to resolve your issue.

For me, I was having the same issue, and uninstalling the chrome remote desktop solved it. I don't know but somehow, it interferes with the settings. –

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2
  • What Google chrome remote desktop have to do with the question that was asked? How does uninstalling it solve the problem in the question?
    – Nmath
    Dec 17, 2021 at 3:25
  • For me, I was having the same issue, and uninstalling the chrome remote desktop solved it. I don't know but somehow, it interferes with the settings.
    – Atif Ali
    Dec 19, 2021 at 10:28
0

On Fedora 34 at least, the software with the GUI printer settings is called gnome-control-center. I can confirm that starting it as root with sudo gnome-control-center fixed the disabled "Unlock" button and I was able to add my printer as described in the opensource.com Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) docs. Exiting and re-starting the print dialog resulted in the printer showing up as a target.

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1
  • You can check this yourself on your distro by watching top or htop as you start the GUI and looking for a relevant process.
    – dfarrell07
    Jun 6, 2022 at 19:36
-1

As an additional security measure, you need to log in to a physical seat to be able to unlock under the default configuration. If that is impossible, e.g. when the machine is virtual, you need to change the policies from ResultActive to ResultAny.

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1
  • Where do I find and change these policies?
    – Allan Bertelsen
    May 6, 2020 at 8:56

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