Last Review: 2014-Okt-17

SolydXK Update Pack 2014.10.15 breaks CUPS

2014 Oktober

The SolydXK Update Pack 2014.10.15 was a major one and took quite a while to install. Unfortunately it created a bug, which wasn't funny at all.

I always used CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System, for all printer related issues. However applying this update screwed up printing, since I no longer had access to http://localhost:631/ provided by the CUPS server.

Searching the file /var/log/daemon.log resulted in a surprise, since apparently the whole system start has been changed. While formerly init was used to fire up a machine the new solution is systemd.

So what problem did systemd have starting the CUPS Printing Service? Look at the following part of /var/log/daemon.log:

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Oct 17 14:05:49 xyz systemd[1]: Starting CUPS Printing Service...
Oct 17 14:05:49 xyz systemd[1]: Started CUPS Printing Service.
Oct 17 14:05:49 xyz systemd[1917]: Failed at step NAMESPACE spawning /usr/sbin/cupsd: Operation not permitted
Oct 17 14:05:49 xyz systemd[1]: cups.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=226/NAMESPACE
Oct 17 14:05:49 xyz systemd[1]: Unit cups.service entered failed state.
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The red colored line adresses the problem: CUPS couldn't start because of a permission rights problem. But there where no problems concerning the daemon file /usr/sbin/cupsd and when started in a console with sudo cupsd everything worked fine.

Finally a net search using the string linux cups status=226/NAMESPACE delivered an Arch Linux Bug Report which uncovered the mystery.

How to get running CUPS on SolydXK with Update Pack 2014.10.15

In order to run CUPS the /tmp directory has to be used. On my installation this was a Symbolic Link (also called symlink or soft link) to /var/tmp which could not be used when systemd started CUPS. To get the job done this directory has to be changed into a real (normal) one.

First type and execute the following command within your terminal window...

sudo rmdir /tmp

...and then this one:

sudo mkdir /tmp

From now on systemd can start your CUPS Printing Service properly.