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I am having trouble with an cups installation. It seems to be in a broken state. When i try to reinstall it it stalls, the same if i try to remove it completely.

I am running the server version 64 bit of Ubuntu 10.10 with kernel Linux version 2.6.35-22-server.

When i try to start the cups daemon with the following command

sudo service cups start

It just stays there and nothing happens.

I have tried to remove it, to be able to reinstall it, with the following command

sudo apt-get purge cups

It finally stalls with the following message

Removing cups ...

After that nothing happens.

The process tree for the apt-get command looks like this.

1404 1404 1404 ? 00:00:00 sshd
26495 26495 26495 ? 00:00:00 sshd
26581 26495 26495 ? 00:00:00 sshd
26582 26582 26582 pts/4 00:00:00 bash
27158 27158 26582 pts/4 00:00:00 apt-get
27172 27172 27172 pts/2 00:00:00 dpkg
27176 27172 27172 pts/2 00:00:00 cups.prerm
27178 27172 27172 pts/2 00:00:00 stop

I have tried to leave the process running for a while to see if i get any error messages but without success. To get out of it I have to kill the processes.

sudo dpkg --configure cups

dpkg: error processing cups (--configure):
 package cups is already installed and configured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 cups

sudo dpkg --status cups

Package: cups
Status: purge ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: net
Installed-Size: 8292
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.4.4-6ubuntu2.3
Replaces: cupsddk-drivers (<< 1.4.0)
Provides: cupsddk-drivers
Depends: libavahi-client3 (>= 0.6.16), libavahi-common3 (>= 0.6.16), libc6 (>= 2.7), libcups2 (>= 1.4.4-3~), libcupscgi1 (>= 1.4.2), libcupsdriver1 (>= 1.4.0), libcupsimage2 (>= 1.4.0), libcupsmime1 (>= 1.4.0), libcupsppdc1 (>= 1.4.0), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libgnutls26 (>= 2.7.14-0), libgssapi-krb5-2 (>= 1.8+dfsg), libijs-0.35, libkrb5-3 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2), libldap-2.4-2 (>= 2.4.7), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libpaper1, libpoppler7, libslp1, libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1), libusb-0.1-4 (>= 2:0.1.12), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), debconf (>= 1.2.9) | debconf-2.0, upstart-job, poppler-utils (>= 0.12), procps, ghostscript, lsb-base (>= 3), cups-common (>= 1.4.4), cups-client (>= 1.4.4-6ubuntu2.3), ssl-cert (>= 1.0.11), adduser, bc, ttf-freefont, cups-ppdc
Recommends: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0), cups-driver-gutenprint, ghostscript-cups
Suggests: cups-bsd, foomatic-db-compressed-ppds | foomatic-db, hplip, xpdf-korean | xpdf-japanese | xpdf-chinese-traditional | xpdf-chinese-simplified, cups-pdf, smbclient (>= 3.0.9), udev
Breaks: foomatic-filters (<< 4.0)
Conflicts: cupsddk-drivers (<< 1.4.0)
Conffiles:
 /etc/fonts/conf.d/99pdftoopvp.conf a5221cfad70a981c80864229ef56586d
 /etc/logrotate.d/cups 5bb41fa9900f0d1c565954405a2bd7c4
 /etc/default/cups 2b436fbb1a32b82b6aba45a76a1d7e40
 /etc/pam.d/cups ff2488324854f7b1e892bb0df062d5f0
 /etc/init/cups.conf 1a3cd022e8474e3d2b44640f33ce68e3
 /etc/ufw/applications.d/cups 29e98a6d850da251e180c3d68dec2bd3
 /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd 60c4b26bfd5c033baa3dd48a3b2e9911
 /etc/cups/cupsd.conf e2c7ec15835ea0939e5e86f7c6efcc03
 /etc/cups/snmp.conf 2326a8af1e112676d55245bc5eb459ca
 /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.default a68d54d76021e857dd1d64edf57d36c5
Description: Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - server
 The Common UNIX Printing System (or CUPS(tm)) is a printing system and
 general replacement for lpd and the like.  It supports the Internet
 Printing Protocol (IPP), and has its own filtering driver model for
 handling various document types.
 .
 This package provides the CUPS scheduler/daemon and related files.
Original-Maintainer: Debian CUPS Maintainers <pkg-cups-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>

Would be greatful if someone could provide some help on how to solve this issue.

Holocryptic
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user67046
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2 Answers2

4

Also, try to dpkg --force-all --remove cups && aptitude install cups. It worked for me once with another (broken) package.

Chris Hasiński
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  • I tried to run this command, for me it produces the same result as when i tried with sudo apt-get purge cups. It stalls there and nothing more happens. – user67046 Jan 19 '11 at 18:53
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    I think I managed to get rid of it. I commented out some lines in the cups.prerm script. After that the dpkg --force-all --remove cups would finish. I also needed to remove some depending packages that was left. There after could I reinstall cups again successfully. Now I have it up and running again. Thanks a lot! – user67046 Jan 19 '11 at 20:54
  • If you can submit the line to debian's bugtracker as a bug. – Chris Hasiński Jan 20 '11 at 09:06
  • Worked for me. ubuntu 18.04 installed 2 days ago. – steven smith May 24 '18 at 03:26
1

Try running dpkg -a --configure. This should tell you what problems are being encountered. I have found broken packages don't uninstall.

Rarely, I have had to edit the install scripts to skip a failing step. Once I get the package installed, I uninstall, purge, and reinstall the package.

BillThor
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  • Running the command you suggest doesn't produce any output for me. Sorry if I dont provide more information. I have search the logs to see if they output any thing that can give me a hint, but havent found anything. Maybe a fresh install will be the only solution. – user67046 Jan 19 '11 at 18:55