Sorry Woody, should have been to the OP...

thanks woody.

much appreciated.

I'll get some professional boffin to come in and sort it out for me given that it's my sole income source!!

A warning about using the 10.5.6 Combo Update - it actually reverts the CUPS daemon (and other system files) to the versions that are older than the ones installed by Security Update 2009-001. And afterwards, the Security Update is no longer visible in Software Update because the system thinks it's already installed, so you may have difficulty installing it in the future.

Edit: You can download and manually reinstall the Security Update (and other updates that may have been overwritten) from http://support.apple.com/downloads/

I just tried replacing the updated cupsd with the version from 10.5.6, and ThinPrint works again, so the change that breaks ThinPrint is indeed localized to the cupsd binary. So replacing a single file is definitely a better workaround than applying the entire Combo Update, but it still has the possibility of re-opening any security issues that Apple has fixed in cupsd with Security Update 2009-001.

I'm looking into extracting cupsd from the update package...

I agree that replacing just cupsd is better than not installing the Security Update at all, or reverting using the Combo Update. I just wanted to make sure people realize the potential security risk.

Here are the commands (for Terminal) to get the older version of cupsd and backup the original to /usr/sbin/cupsd_backup:

1. If you have not installed Security Update 2009-001 yet and printing works correctly - make a backup of cupsd and restore it after updating:

2. If you have already installed Security Update 2009-001, and have Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update (not Combo) (372 MB):

3. If you have already installed Security Update 2009-001, and have Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update (668 MB):

For reference, here is the file size and MD5 sum of /usr/sbin/cupsd on my system:
With Security Update 2009-001: 762224 bytes, MD5 = b381c745a8f0576614deaa7af3fd71cf
After reverting to the 10.5.6 version: 758112 bytes, MD5 = f0d734907eb2be74a6e9beb33e1cb925

Woody,

Obviously, I would not want to advise people to make their computer
insecure, in my particular incident printing is quite important, so I am
taking a chance. Please let me know if there is an easier workaround.

Steve

Steve no one was accusing you of anything.

I only followed up with your original post because of what I though might be an issue after replying the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update and had not had any time to do any testing on this issue beyond telling users that setting up the printers as before this feature existed was a viable workaround which I believe to be the safest way around after one has applied Mac OS X Security Update 2009-001. However one solution doesn't necessarily fit all users needs and mudaltsov has now provided a way of just replacing the cupsd binary and while there remains a risk with this I believe it's less then not having the Mac OS X Security Update 2009-001 at all or possible issues of replying Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update after having applied the Mac OS X Security Update 2009-001.

Anyway I know some users that use VPN's and replacing just the cupsd binary gives them to ability to apply the Mac OS X Security Update 2009-001 and then still use ThinPrint with Network Printers while connected to the VPN which they couldn't do connected directly while connected to the VPN and were forgoing applying the security update in total.

It's not a perfect work-a-round however it's only temporary and it's better then applying the entire Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update after having applied the Mac OS X Security Update 2009-001.

Users are just going to have to remember to replace the cupsd binary once VMware comes up with a fix if Apple doesn't do anything although I think they may address this as well but we'll just have to wait and see who has to do what but until then there are now several different opting to choose from depending on ones needs.

I can confirm another instance where simply replacing /usr/sbin/cupsd works. Instead of downloading the (huge) Combo update and extracting cupsd from it, I got the previous version from time machine. I don't know how to get at /usr/sbin from Time Machine's space interface, but it was easy enough to find in Terminal. (Look for the 758,112 byte version, probably dated December 8th.)

$ cd /Volumes/My Time Machine Drive/Backups.backupdb/My Computer/
$ ls -l */*/usr/sbin/cupsd

Then back up the original /usr/sbin/cupsd and copy in the one you found in Time Machine.

One additional tip. VMWare may have automatically disabled printer sharing in your settings if it failed enough times. It did for me. So after replacing cupsd, check your VM configuration and re-enable printer sharing if necessary.

And since cupsd is a daemon, best to restart your Mac after replacing it to make sure the new (old) version is running. (Or restart cupsd any way you know how - probably launchctl.)