[cups] [UNKN] STR #4320: Strange problem with CUPS on a Linux (CentOS 5.10) LAN

Michael Sweet msweet at apple.com
Wed Jan 22 05:43:55 PST 2014


Robert,

On Jan 22, 2014, at 8:34 AM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> Just set up queues with no PPDs; if you have already created a queue you can revert it to a raw queue with:
>> 
>>    lpadmin -p printer -m raw
> 
> I expect that lpadmin will fail, since the /etc/ directory is on a read-only 
> file system -- I *cannot* use the 'normal' admin utilities it all *has* to be 
> done using a text editor...  CUPS pretty much sucks for this sort of 
> situation, esp. since the documentation does not really document how to admin 
> things that way.

With all due respect, you are not following the file system standards that all system services rely on.  In particular, /usr can be read-only and shared but /etc is supposed to be read-write.  The usual way of propagating writable configuration files like this is through tools like "puppet".  Putting /etc/cups on a read-only filesystem is NOT supported.

Anyways, if you have to do things by hand, delete the PPD file in the /etc/cups/ppd directory. You might also have to remove Filter lines from /etc/cups/printers.conf (I don't remember how much information is in the older versions of CUPS off hand, we've been adding a lot of caching of data in recent releases to speed startup...)

> Next question:
> 
> With a local printers.conf, I am now seeing two copies of the queues (the 
> 'local' printers.conf version and the version picked up via network).  How do 
> I prevent this duplication.

If you are using an old version of CUPS and have static queues defined, you need to disable browsing.

> Also, we have been getting errors relating to probably with file format 
> strangeness (nonsense about bad stream type, application/octect).  I'm 
> *guessing* because of the fact that I have queues to the server's ipp address, 
> but with PPD file at the same time.

I'd need to see the error messages to provide any useful answers.

_________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair




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