CUPS setup / dev/lp0 perms. ... Slow printing.

Hello,

Ive got an HP LaserJet 2100 / parallel interface.
I had some troubles getting going due to non-working cups drivers. Updated cups and also used a .ppd.gz file from something HP provided. found the files here...
www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-LaserJet_2100

Anyways. Printer was working fine with the new ppd driver. Sent a few test prints. 1200 dpi, all features working ok. (but slow) Then I rebooted. Note: this was a hard forced reboot to halt IO on a filesystem to run some undelete utils. Since then printer is not working. Re-traced my steps through the driver install / printer definition in cups.

cups errors report:
Unable to open device file "/dev/lp0": Permission denied

perms on lp0 should not have changed...

I just set them to 666.. restarted the spooler and it seems like it working.
inside /dev/
crw-rw-rw- 1 root lp 6, 0 2009-01-20 16:22 lp0

So CUPS and the printer is functional.
Now, why would perms have changed?
Is this the correct perms on lp0?
Should lp or cups be intercepting the print job anyway and the lp user sends the write to /dev/lp0 ?

System is slackware 12.2 kernel 2.6.27.7 cups 1.3.9

Upon each bootup /dev/lp0 is getting created with permissions to allow root and group lp rw access.

The printer shows unavailable. print jobs error out saying "unable to write to /dev/lp0"

cupsd is running as root
parallel is running as lp

As soon as I add +rw to all users it is fine. This does not feel like the correct "solution".