iPrint printer agents on NSS Linux shows "Not Bound"

  • 7002678
  • 18-Feb-2009
  • 08-Nov-2012

Environment

Novell iPrint for Linux Open Enterprise Server 2 Support Pack 1

Situation

iPrint has been successfully installed and configured on an NSS volume, using the

/opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprint_nss_relocate

script.  The iPrint printers are initially in a good state of Idle or Printing, but cease to work after patching or other system reconfiguration.  The printer agents listed by the print manager show a status of “Not Bound”.


Other Symptoms:

/var/log/messages
WARNING:   The iPrint Manager was not able to exec child process /opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprintgw. 
or
error: stat of /var/opt/novell/log/iprint/ipsmd.log failed: No such device


ps -ef | grep iprint-server
     (shows ipsmd as defunct)

Resolution

This issue has been reported to engineering.

Workaround:

Modify /etc/permissions.d/iprint to read:

/opt/novell/iprint/bin/ilprsrvrd       root:iprintgrp    4750
/opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprintcnfg      root:www          4750
/opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprintgw        root:iprintgrp    4750

and run

SuSEconfig --module permissions

rcnovell-ipsmd restart

Additional Information

When running iPrint from an NSS volume, it is necessary to create a LUM enabled user and group to run as because trustee rights must be assigned to the iPrint files and directories on the NSS volume.  The iprint_nss_relocate script carries this out correctly.  However, when any patching or reconfiguration is carried out, the permissions set by the script are overwritten by SuSEconfig and set back to the local iprint group rather than the LUM enabled group.  This is because the file

/etc/permissions.d/iprint

contains the following lines:

/opt/novell/iprint/bin/ilprsrvrd       root:iprint    4750
/opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprintcnfg      root:www       4750
/opt/novell/iprint/bin/iprintgw        root:iprint    4750

The iprint group is the local Linux group, which takes away the ability for the LUM enabled group to execute iprintgw and ilprsrvrd.