[cups.general] printers.conf file truncated when adding new queue

[Michael Sweet]

John,

Check for cupsd crashes/core files, or other "server restarted" messages in the error_log at the time this happened. We have fixed a number of issues that could cause this since 1.3.7, particularly by replacing the code that updates config files with something a little more robust that can't leave a half-written printers.conf file in place.


On Mar 14, 2012, at 9:26 AM, John Donovan wrote:

> We had our first production problem yesterday after over 5 years using 
> CUPS.
> Currently, we are using cups-1.3.7-26.el5_6.1 on RHEL 5.7 i686 VM (VMware 
> ESX 4).
> We were adding a new queue using the web console on FireFox from MS 
> Windows 7 workstation. 
> Everything was normal, after the model/driver screen prompted for user/
> password.  Apparently, we fat-fingered the password as LDAP failed (per 
> syslog).
> We entered the information again, from beginning.  This time, the login 
> was successful, but the screen remained blank... did not go to the 
> options screen.
> We discovered that the printers.conf file had been truncated after the 
> entry for the new queue.  About 2/3 of the 456 entries in the 
> printers.conf file had disappeared.
> All of the files in /etc/cups/ppd were present, including the new print 
> queue.  Needless to say no one could print to those missing queues.
> We restored the printers.conf file and added the new queue successfully.
> Going forward we are using command line to perform print queue 
> maintenance.  This includes making a copy of the printers.conf files 
> before and after the queue maintenance in addition to nightly backups.
> But, other than the LDAP failure, we don't see any other errors that 
> explains why the printers.conf file would be truncated.
> Have you experienced this or have some insight as to why this would 
> happen? 
> 
> Thanks,
> :-)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> John Donovan
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________________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair