[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#380663: Cupsys starts when first installed, but silently exits and will never run again

[Carl Fink]

Package: cupsys
Version: 1.2.1-3
Severity: grave

Twice, now, I've had the experience of having to not only remove, but purge
cupsys and reinstall it in order to get my bog-standard HP Laserjet to work. 
Both times, everything was fine immediately after the reinstall, but when I
tried to print a few days later, nothing happened.  

lpq reports "lpq: Unable to connect to server".

"/etc/init.d/cupsys restart" returns no visible error, but lpq still says it
can't connect to server and ps reports no cupsys process.

And there's NOTHING in error_log.  Literally, it's an empty file.  Nothing
in /var/log/messages either.  

No program should ever, ever fail silently.

I really do NOT want to have to reinstall CUPS every time I need to print.

Just in case it helps:

NewPicking:/home/carlf# lsof -i TCP:631
NewPicking:/home/carlf# 

(That's after trying "/etc/init.d/cupsys start".)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-k7
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages cupsys depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.95            Add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.5.2           Debian configuration management sy
ii  gs-esp                   8.15.1.dfsg.1-2 The Ghostscript PostScript interpr
ii  libacl1                  2.2.39-1        Access control list shared library
ii  libc6                    2.3.6-15        GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcupsimage2            1.2.1-3         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsys2               1.2.1-3         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-2              0.62-4          simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgnutls13              1.4.1-1         the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libldap2                 2.1.30-13+b1    OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam0g                 0.79-3.1        Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpaper1                1.1.19          Library for handling paper charact
ii  libslp1                  1.2.1-5         OpenSLP libraries
ii  lsb-base                 3.1-10          Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  patch                    2.5.9-4         Apply a diff file to an original
ii  perl-modules             5.8.8-4         Core Perl modules
ii  procps                   1:3.2.7-2       /proc file system utilities
ii  xpdf-utils [poppler-util 3.01-9          Portable Document Format (PDF) sui
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.3-13      compression library - runtime

Versions of packages cupsys recommends:
ii  cupsys-client           1.2.1-3          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  foomatic-filters        3.0.2-20060712-1 linuxprinting.org printer support 
ii  smbclient               3.0.22-1         a LanManager-like simple client fo

-- debconf information:
  cupsys/raw-print: true
  cupsys/backend: ipp, lpd, parallel, socket, usb