[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#522553: cups: Error handling issue clogs up queue

[Jamie Robert Thompson]

Package: cups
Version: 1.3.8-1lenny4.1
Severity: important


This issue I am experiencing was brieifly discussed on pkg-cups-devel last year,
but I found no relevant bugs, hence I'm filing one.

This bug relates to this part of the problem (as discribed here):
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-cups-devel/2008-February/004815.htm

....for the benefit of search engines and the impatient:
> This means that 'gs' will exit with exit code 1 in case of error, however, 'cifmp160'
> will exit with exit code 0 in case of an error. The following can be read in bash(1),
> chapter "Pipelines":
>
> > The return status of a pipeline is the exit status of the last command, unless the
> > pipefail option is  enabled. If pipefail is enabled, the pipeline's return status
> > is the value of the last (rightmost) command to exit with a non-zero status, or
> > zero if all commands exit successfully.
>
> This means that the exit code of the full pipeline will be zero, but there was some
> commands which failed in the pipe!
>
> 	Márton Németh

....of course, the root problem triggering this issue is probably down to Ghostscript:

> $ cat test.ps |/usr/bin/gs -r600 -g4958x7016 -q -dNOPROMPT -dSAFER -sDEVICE=ppmraw \
> -sOutputFile=- -| /usr/local/bin/cifmp160 --imageres 600 --papersize a4
> --media plain --paperload asf --bbox 9,14,585,834
> BJLSTART
> ControlMode=Common
> SetTime=20080221204253
> BJLEND
> CIF COMMAND ERROR :file access Error!
> not support this image format
> $ echo $?
> 0

I know nothing about any of the components involved, but Ghostscript not supporting
an image format required in normal usage is probably a bug, requiring either work on
Ghostscript or a change of Postscript engine...dunno.

- Jamie

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages cups depends on:
ii  adduser              3.110               add and remove users and groups
ii  cups-common          1.3.8-1lenny4.1     Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0 1.5.26              Debian configuration management sy
ii  ghostscript          8.64~dfsg-1         The GPL Ghostscript PostScript/PDF
ii  libavahi-compat-libd 0.6.24-2            Avahi Apple Bonjour compatibility 
ii  libc6                2.9-4               GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcups2             1.3.8-1lenny4.1     Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsimage2        1.3.8-1lenny4.1     Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-3          1.2.12-1            simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgnutls26          2.6.4-2             the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libkrb53             1.6.dfsg.4~beta1-11 Transitional library package/krb4 
ii  libldap-2.4-2        2.4.11-1            OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam0g             1.0.1-9             Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpaper1            1.1.23+nmu1         library for handling paper charact
ii  libslp1              1.2.1-7.5           OpenSLP libraries
ii  lsb-base             3.2-22              Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  perl-modules         5.10.0-19           Core Perl modules
ii  poppler-utils [xpdf- 0.10.4-3            PDF utilitites (based on libpopple
ii  procps               1:3.2.7-11          /proc file system utilities
ii  ssl-cert             1.0.23              simple debconf wrapper for OpenSSL

Versions of packages cups recommends:
pn  avahi-utils                   <none>     (no description available)
pn  cups-client                   <none>     (no description available)
pn  foomatic-filters              <none>     (no description available)
pn  smbclient                     <none>     (no description available)

Versions of packages cups suggests:
pn  cups-bsd                      <none>     (no description available)
pn  cups-driver-gutenprint        <none>     (no description available)
pn  cups-pdf                      <none>     (no description available)
pn  foomatic-db                   <none>     (no description available)
pn  foomatic-db-engine            <none>     (no description available)
pn  hplip                         <none>     (no description available)
pn  xpdf-korean | xpdf-japanese | <none>     (no description available)

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