10.04 -> 10.10: printconf/ebox-printers/foomatic-db-gutenprint block the upgrade

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the log files from '/var/log/dist-upgrade/' to this bug report as separate attachments? Thanks in advance.

Thank you for the logs.

Please attach the file /var/lib/dpkg/status too.

Thanks in advance.

Found the culprit: printconf

Could you please try to remove that package and try to upgrade again in order to confirm that. Thanks.

that's it
upgrade is now downloading new packages

Thank you for the confirmation.

I looked at this and I can fix it by adding "foomatic-db-compressed-ppds | foomatic-db" instead of foomatic-db in printconf, ebox, foomatic-db-gutenprint

I prepared updates, I just need to be sure that this is really a drop-in-replacement for foomatic-db

Hm, apparently its not - at least printconf will not work with the compressed ones. So you can't have printconf and foomatic-db-gutenprint and ebox-printers installed together with ubuntu-desktop.

The packages foomatic-gui and python-foomatic install without problems, only printconf-gui does not instal;l as it depends on foomatic-db, foomatic-db-hpijs, and foomatic-db-gutenprint.

For testing I have installed printconf now overriding the dependencies:

sudo dpkg -i --force-depends printconf_0.7.9.3_all.deb

There are the following problems with printconf as it comes from upstream, especially of printconf interacting with CUPS:

1. printconf requires to be started as root, This requirement is not needed by Ubuntu, as it uses the lpadmin group feature of CUPS. printconf has probably many incompatibilities with this feature. One incompatibility which I have seen is that it restarts the CUPS daemon (which a correctly written printer setup tool does not need). There may be further problems like directly writing into config files in /etc/cups/.

2. It uses the deprecated usb:/dev/usb/lp0 URIs which are not supported by CUPS any more.

3. It only supports printer/driver pairs defined by Foomatic XML data in /usr/share/foomatic. It does not even support ready-made PPD files in /usr/share/ppd and subdirectories. Also PPD generators in /usr/lib/cups/driver/ and /usr/share/cups/drv/ are not supported. So it will not find most drivers on a Ubuntu system, as they are using PPD generators or ready-made PPDs.

4. It tries to set up queues for connected printers automatically although they have already queues. Probably it does not recognize the URIs of the current CUPS. After failing to set up print queues it does not start its GUI.

I do not know how much this tool is usable with non-CUPS spoolers as it is perhaps the only GUI tool for setting up printers . The inability to use ready-made PPDs for PostScript printers (they are supported by Foomatic, Foomatic is the only way to use them on non-CUPS spoolers) restricts it also a lot there.

My recommendations:

Due to the tool requiring a Foomatic database the dependency on foomatic-db cannot be removed. The dependency on foomatic-db-hpijs has to be removed as foomatic-db-hpijs is discontinued upstream. foomatic-db-gutenprint should go into the Recommends, as its absence does not make printconf unusable. I also would let printconf conflict with cups, as it actually does not work with the current CUPS versions. printconf simply did not follow the development of CUPS.

This would leave the package uninstallable on a Ubuntu Desktop system, but a Ubuntu Desktop system has CUPS-based printing and printconf really does not work with current CUPS.

Perhaps one should even remove it from Ubuntu, as Ubuntu uses CUPS for printing. On Debian one could leave it in, but only with the dependency changes which I mentioned above.

If we remove it from Ubuntu, I could add a transitional package to system-config-printer so that users get migrated to system-config-printer.

For everyone reading this who is simply a user, use system-config-printer.

Archive admins, please remove printconf:

<tkamppeter_> mvo, I have tested printconf and it is not compatible with Ubuntu any more. It lost track with the development of CUPS. I suggest removing it from Ubuntu.
<tkamppeter> mvo, OdyX, printconf's upstream ChangeLog ends on 2003-05-27 so it is discontinued upstream. What did hold it so long in the distros.

Archive admins, as printconf is a part of foomatic-gui and its unclears what to do with that I leave it to Till to decide what to do with the package.

I tried also running

sudo foomatic-gui &

(requires foomatic-db to be installed). Here ate least I got a list of the printers detected by CUPS and it seems that the correct USB URIs are used. Network printers I could not test, as the network printer detection falls into an infinite loop due to an upstream bug. Problem is that again the available PPDs/driversare not polled from CUPS, so there are no PostScript printer PPDs from manufacturers (ready-made PPDs) nor any PPDs provided by PPD generators (HPLIP, Gutenprint). This renders also this tool unusable for Ubuntu.

My suggestion:

Remove foomatic-gui sourcepackage altogether.

Add transitional packages to other packages (like system-config-printer) to migrate users of foomatic-gui and printconf.

Both printconf and foomatic-gui do not work correctly with current Foomatic any more. They show many printer/driver pairs for which Foomatic cannot provide a PPD file because either the driver XML file has no or an empty command line prototype or the driver XML file does not exist and the printer XML file has no link for a ready-made PPD which exists on the current system. This is an upstream bug.

archive admins, please remove the whole foomatic-gui source package as the foomatic-gui tool is equally unusable with Ubuntu,

See also
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/647460

mvo, does your workaround on update-manager also solve the foomatic-db-gutenprint problem, by replacing foomatic-db-gutenprint with ijfgutenprint-ppds?

for ebox-printers I have my doubts whether this software (ebox) is still up-to-date. When I go to the home page http://ebox-platform.com I get immediately redirected to http://www.zentyal.org/ and I get offered a server platform named Zentyal. So it seems that the project has been renamed.

I do not know whether the new software has an updated printing module. The printing module of the ebox software as it is in Universe currently at least directly access the local Foomatic XML database using the Perl library of foomatic-db-engine. I do not know whether it polls PPD/driver information from CUPS.If not, ebox-printers has a bug, but I cannot report it as I never tested ebox

Here we probably also need a workaround in update-manager, but on the long term a fix in Zentyal.

This is less problematic as users of ebox probably do not have ubuntu-desktop installed.

This bug was fixed in the package update-manager - 1:0.142.16

---------------
update-manager (1:0.142.16) maverick; urgency=low

  * DistUpgrade/ReleaseAnnouncement:
    - add link to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features to tell
      users about the new features in this release
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgrade.cfg:
    - help the upgrade by removing printconf, foomatic-db-gutenprint
      and ebox-printers as they are not compatible with
      foomatic-db-compressed-ppds (LP: #647460)
 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:22:36 +0200