Printing to PDF broken in Ubuntu Intrepid

Ubuntu did something weird with the CUPS-PDF thing in Intrepid.  It’s broken when you try to print a file to the PDF output.  It’s related to this bug which has something to do with AppArmor. You’ll get a message “/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf failed” if you try to print a test page from the CUPS admin server, and you’ll see these messages in /var/log/messages:

type=1503 audit(1227758604.902:61): operation="capable" name="dac_override" pid=16910 profile="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf"
type=1503 audit(1227758604.902:62): operation="capable" name="dac_read_search" pid=16910 profile="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf"
type=1503 audit(1227758632.546:63): operation="capable" name="dac_override" pid=16953 profile="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf"
type=1503 audit(1227758632.546:64): operation="capable" name="dac_read_search" pid=16953 profile="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf"
type=1505 audit(1227758866.162:65): operation="profile_load" name="/bin/ping" name2="default" pid=17158
type=1505 audit(1227758866.226:66): operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" name2="default" pid=17164
type=1505 audit(1227758866.250:67): operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/klogd" name2="default" pid=17168
type=1505 audit(1227758866.294:68): operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/syslog-ng" name2="default" pid=17171

I was fooling around a bit and was able to get it working again by doing the following. Warning, this solution might be considered “hackish”, I don’t fully understand apparmor and apparmor profiles, I just want to be able to print to PDF… Is that asking too much!?! I don’t know what security risks this might pose if you are on a multi-user network or run servers. I don’t worry since I’m the only one on my network and I’m behind a stealthed router and don’t run any servers to the outside.

In a root terminal:

apt-get install apparmor-profiles
ln -s /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd /etc/apparmor.d/disable/
apparmor_parser -R /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd
/etc/init.d/cups restart

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6 Responses to Printing to PDF broken in Ubuntu Intrepid

  1. Dev says:

    Thank you,

    It worked !!!

  2. Philip Wittamore says:

    Thanks, it works for me too.
    but GRR..! this is basic desktop usage, how/why did it slip through testing ?

  3. Deeaycee says:

    SOLVED
    Worked for me in Intrepid
    THANK YOU!

    print to network pdf printer from win
    print from win to ubuntu
    print to pdf

  4. JDS says:

    I was able to just set cupsd to “complain” (Terminal session cut-n-paste):

    ######
    root@jeff-laptop:~# aa-complain
    Please enter the program to switch to complain mode: cupsd
    Setting /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd to complain mode.
    ######

    That seemed to work for me.

  5. Steve says:

    Worked for me in Linux Mint 7. Thank you.

  6. Pingback: How To: Fix CUPS PDF Printing in Linux | r3dux.org

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