Comment 17 for bug 295318

Confirmed still a problem with a new install of Jaunty.

cups-pdf 2.5.0-1ubuntu1 PDF printer for CUPS

The failure to write to the ~./PDF directory can be confirmed with tail /var/log/cups/cups_pdf.log
mkdir .PDF from users home directory resolves.

Apparmor audit entry says:
kernel: [ 1938.022085] type=1503 audit(1243933166.961:11): operation="capable" name="dac_override" pid=4553 profile="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf"

the Apparmor profile /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd contains:

  # we treat cups-pdf specially, since it needs to write into /home
  # and thus needs extra paranoia
  /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf Px,
# separate profile since this needs to write into /home
/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf {
  #include <abstractions/base>
  #include <abstractions/fonts>
  #include <abstractions/nameservice>
  #include <abstractions/user-tmp>

  capability chown,
  capability fowner,
  capability fsetid,
  capability setgid,
  capability setuid,

  /bin/dash ixr,
  /bin/bash ixr,
  /etc/papersize r,
  /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf r,
  @{HOME}/PDF/ rw,
  @{HOME}/PDF/* rw,
  /usr/bin/gs ixr,
  /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf mr,
  /usr/lib/ghostscript/** mr,
  /usr/share/** r,
  /var/log/cups/cups-pdf_log w,
  /var/spool/cups-pdf/** rw,
}

It would seem that there are rules to allow writing to ~./PDF and ~./PDF/*, but they are not working. I was not able to work out why.

This is a trivial problem for experienced users to solve, but as a usability issue for non-technical users it deserves a higher priority.

While there is an out-of-box alternative 'print to file', select 'pdf' format, this may not be intuitive or clear for new users, as the documentation at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PDFPrinting?action=show&redirect=PrintToPDF is outdated and only mentions the cups-pdf method. I will try and update it.