cupsd fails to restart on upgrade

[Vince McIntyre]

Binary package hint: cups

This is probably the same underlying issue as https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/304039, but I see different symptoms.
My system is currently working ok but the upgrade process was not as smooth as it should be.

I did a 'sudo aptitude update; sudo aptitude safe-upgrade;' and during the upgrade of the 'cups' package aptitude seemed to hang. I hit ^c to skip it, but had to do this twice. I then got a message as in #304039,
  E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
I tried that, but things still seemed to get stuck. ^c again.
I found with 'top' that there were now 3 cupsd processes running, so I killed them (kill -KILL, also tried killall cupsd)
and tried dpkg --configure -a again. No obvious improvement.

Apologies that this report is a little vague, as I was in a bit of a hurry and did not make detailed notes.

I had to leave the system, but when I came back to it 12 hours later, things seemed to be working.
I reran 'dpkg --configure -a' but got no output on the terminal, it's unclear that the command did anything.

It's possible this is related to the flaky USB connection to the printer. The electrical contact is not always good,
though I have taken steps to ensure the USB connector has reasonable contact and doesn't jiggle around.
I can't recall if the device was showing as connected at the time.

/var/log/kern.log contained these lines, which may be of use.

Dec 19 10:06:04 ubuntu kernel: [1719265.271037] type=1505 audit(1229641564.644:27): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" name2="default" pid=29147
Dec 19 10:06:04 ubuntu kernel: [1719265.495352] type=1505 audit(1229641564.868:28): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" name2="default" pid=29152
Dec 19 10:06:04 ubuntu kernel: [1719265.498068] type=1505 audit(1229641564.872:29): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" name2="default" pid=29152

Dec 19 10:16:54 ubuntu kernel: [1719915.297126] type=1505 audit(1229642214.672:32): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" name2="default" pid=490

Dec 19 10:19:44 ubuntu kernel: [1720085.067577] type=1505 audit(1229642384.440:33): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" name2="default" pid=697
Dec 19 10:19:45 ubuntu kernel: [1720086.325419] type=1505 audit(1229642385.700:34): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" name2="default" pid=702
Dec 19 10:19:45 ubuntu kernel: [1720086.327127] type=1505 audit(1229642385.700:35): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" name2="default" pid=702

Dec 19 10:21:03 ubuntu kernel: [1720163.894603] type=1505 audit(1229642463.268:36): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" name2="default" pid=829
Dec 19 10:21:03 ubuntu kernel: [1720164.128615] type=1505 audit(1229642463.504:37): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" name2="default" pid=834
Dec 19 10:21:03 ubuntu kernel: [1720164.131235] type=1505 audit(1229642463.504:38): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" name2="default" pid=834

lsusb shows the device as
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 03f0:3611 Hewlett-Packard PSC 2410 Photosmart

When the system detects the device I get this in dmesg:
[45168.656042] usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5
[45168.861809] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[45168.867969] scsi5 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[45168.870479] usb-storage: device found at 5
[45168.870486] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[45169.025278] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 5
[45169.520201] usbcore: registered new interface driver usblp
[45169.888024] usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6
[45170.090339] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[45170.102142] usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 6 if 1 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x3611
[45170.115404] scsi6 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[45170.116124] usb-storage: device found at 6
[45170.116131] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[45173.635616] usblp0: removed
[45175.117242] usb-storage: device scan complete
[45175.120241] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access HP psc 2410 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[45175.144993] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[45175.145466] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[45175.278292] type=1503 audit(1229733410.439:5): operation="inode_permission" requested_mask="::rw" denied_mask="::rw" fsuid=7 name="/dev/tty" pid=9872 profile="/usr/sbin/cupsd"

my current package state -
dpkg -l |grep ^ii |grep cups gives this list:
ii bluez-cups 4.12-0ubuntu5 Bluetooth printer driver for CUPS
ii cups 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - server
ii cups-bsd 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - BSD commands
ii cups-client 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - client programs (SysV)
ii cups-common 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - common files
ii cups-driver-gutenprint 5.2.0~rc1-0ubuntu1 printer drivers for CUPS
ii cupsddk 1.2.3-3 CUPS Driver Development Kit
ii cupsddk-drivers 1.2.3-3 CUPS Driver Development Kit - Driver files
ii hal-cups-utils 0.6.17+git20080728-0ubuntu2 CUPS integration with HAL
ii libcups2 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - libs
ii libcupsimage2 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - image libs
ii libcupsys2 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System (transitional package)
ii libgnomecups1.0-1 0.2.3-2build1 GNOME library for CUPS interaction
ii python-cups 1.9.41-0ubuntu1 Python bindings for CUPS
ii python-cupshelpers 1.0.5+git20080819-0ubuntu6 Python modules for printer configuration with CUPS

dpkg -l libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libc6 libcups2 libcupsimage2 libdbus-1-3 libgcc1 libgnutls26 libijs-0.35 libkrb53 libldap-2.4-2 libpam0g libpaper1 libpoppler3 libslp1 libstdc++6 zlib1g debconf poppler-utils xpdf-utils perl-modules procps ghostscript lsb-base cups-common ssl-cert adduser bc | sort
ii adduser 3.108ubuntu1 add and remove users and groups
ii bc 1.06.94-3ubuntu1 The GNU bc arbitrary precision calculator la
ii cups-common 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - common fil
ii debconf 1.5.23ubuntu2 Debian configuration management system
ii ghostscript 8.63.dfsg.1-0ubuntu6 The GPL Ghostscript PostScript/PDF interpret
ii libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 0.6.23-2ubuntu2.1 Avahi Apple Bonjour compatibility library
ii libc6 2.8~20080505-0ubuntu7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libcups2 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - libs
ii libcupsimage2 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - image libs
ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.4-0ubuntu1 simple interprocess messaging system
ii libgcc1 1:4.3.2-1ubuntu11 GCC support library
ii libgnutls26 2.4.1-1ubuntu0.2 the GNU TLS library - runtime library
ii libijs-0.35 0.35-3 IJS raster image transport protocol: shared
ii libkrb53 1.6.dfsg.4~beta1-3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries
ii libldap-2.4-2 2.4.11-0ubuntu6 OpenLDAP libraries
ii libpam0g 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.3 Pluggable Authentication Modules library
ii libpaper1 1.1.23+nmu1 library for handling paper characteristics
ii libpoppler3 0.8.7-1 PDF rendering library
ii libslp1 1.2.1-7.3 OpenSLP libraries
ii libstdc++6 4.3.2-1ubuntu11 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii lsb-base 3.2-14ubuntu2 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init script function
ii perl-modules 5.10.0-11.1ubuntu2 Core Perl modules
ii poppler-utils 0.8.7-1 PDF utilitites (based on libpoppler)
ii procps 1:3.2.7-9ubuntu2.1 /proc file system utilities
ii ssl-cert 1.0.23 simple debconf wrapper for OpenSSL
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12ubuntu1 compression library - runtime
un xpdf-utils <none> (no description available)

uh - that's odd. xpdf-utils is shown as a Depends: of cups yet it's not installed on my system.

/etc/apt/sources.list
grep -v ^# /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates main restricted
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates main restricted

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid universe
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid universe
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates universe
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates universe

deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid multiverse
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid multiverse
deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates multiverse
deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu intrepid-security multiverse

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ErrorMessage: subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: cups 1.3.9-2ubuntu4
SourcePackage: cups
Title: package cups 1.3.9-2ubuntu4 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-9-generic i686

[Vince McIntyre (vmcintyr)]

The system was under heavy CPU load at the time (numerical simulations).
Not sure if that's relevant, hopefully not.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.