[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#635842: likely fix for your backend crash

[Sanjoy Mahajan]

Norbert,

As you write, "cups became completely unusable, as the lpd backend just
happens to die with a strange error."  For me the problem started with
the upgrade to 1.4.7.  I had a slightly different symptom, namely that
the socket backend would die with status -8 ("crashed"), but only on my
HP PSC 2710 printer (not on the Xerox laserprinters at work).  I suspect
that the cause in your case is the same as in mine; thus, you should be
able to use the fix that I describe below.

The Arch linux bug forum at <https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/25204>
pointed me to a fix that is in cups upstream (1.4.8 and 1.5.0):

<http://www.cups.org/str.php?L3875>

Those versions are not yet in the Debian archives, so I applied the
upstream patch to 1.4.7.  However, before I could recompile cups, I
needed to fix a FTBFS due to a problem in some of the ppd files in the
hp-ppd package.  See BTS #588317 for the report and my patch to fix that
problem.

Then cups recompiled fine.  (Although I had to omit my usual -j3 flag or
else the build failed.  But that problem will be the subject of a
separate bug report, if I can reproduce it reliably.)

-Sanjoy