Corrupt ppds.dat hangs web interface (Was: admin.cgi calls cups-driverd wrong)

[Frikkie Thirion]

> I've managed to resolve the problem as follow:
>
> 1) Stop the cups daemon:
>    # /etc/init.d/cupsys stop
> 2) Remove the CUPS drive cache file:
>    # rm /var/cache/cups/ppds.dat
> 3) Rerun the cups-driverd query from the command line to rebuild the
>    database:
>    #/usr/lib/cups/daemon/cups-driverd list 1 0 "requested
>     -attributes=all ppd-make='KONICA'"
>    (I've obtained the command by looking at my running processed
>     <ps -aux> while the web interface was hanging.)
> 4) Restart cups:
>    # /etc/init.d/cupsys start
>
> 5) Adding the printer from the web interface now works perfectly.
>
> It beats me why the database got toasted...

Possible cause for corrupt driver cache file:
I've looked in /usr/share/ppd:
  There's a symbolic link:
    2-third-party -> /opt/share/ppd
Looking in /opt/share/ppd, I find the same symbolic link there!
    2-third-party -> /opt/share/ppd

This creates an infinite loop when cups-driverd tries to process
all the ppd files. You can see this when log level is set to
debugging in cupsd.conf.

Which package created this problem is unknown to me at this stage.
It can also be isolated to the Ubuntu deb packages. (sorry, Ubuntu, if
I implicate you falsely).
Maybe the infinite loop has nothing to do with crashing the cache file, but creating symbolic links that create infinite loops, IMHO,  isn't good practice.

Regards,
-frix