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This repository was archived by the owner on Mar 10, 2026. It is now read-only.
This repository was archived by the owner on Mar 10, 2026. It is now read-only.

Cups rewrites configuration files. #3344

@michaelrsweet

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@michaelrsweet

Version: -feature
CUPS.org User: amcnabb

As a system administrator, I have been frustrated to find configuration files, such as printers.conf and cups.conf, overwritten by CUPS. Furthermore, if one of these config files is a symlink, CUPS deletes the symlink and creates a brand new file.

This behavior makes it very difficult to administer CUPS. It is impossible to check in config files into a version control system, and it is hard to get CUPS to keep the same configuration across all machines on a network. I have seen various people complain about this behavior on mailing lists, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been bitten by this.

CUPS would be much easier to administer if it wrote temporary data to /var (such as whether a printer is currently offline) instead of rewriting printers.conf. It would also be helpful if it followed symlinks when making changes to config files, and if these changes only happened when explicitly requested by the user (e.g., through the web interface).

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