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After receiving a system wide software update suddenly printing services are not available. At this point, cups appears to be unable to run.

cupsd -t shows an error for

unknown directive JobPrivateAccess on line 137 of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

By commenting out four lines and restarting cups, my print services seem to be running normally. Those four line have to do with JobPrivateAccess/Values and SubscriptionPrivateAccess/Values all four being set to default

cups-config --version responds with

2.4.7

What happened? Also What have I done by commenting those four lines? Is there a more appropriate correction for those four offending lines?

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2
  • It looks like the updated cups has a bit different config. Some settings are now unsupported. REmoving them seems to be OK. Commented 4 hours ago
  • @Pilot6 It looks like the lines are still supported, but only within the context of a section such as <Policy authentication> Commented 4 hours ago

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

It looks like a very recent cups update has tightened acceptable contents of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.

In my case, the offensive lines are:

JobPrivateAccess  default
JopPrivateValues  default
SubscriptionPrivateAccess  default
SubscriptionPrivateValues  default

These appear at the end of the file. Other copies of similar lines appear within sections of the file, such as <Policy authentication>.

Only the orphan lines at the end were offensive to

cupsd -t

Once converted to comments, printing is now working

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7
  • 1
    Might be worth to mention which version of cups you have installed. I got a recent update to version 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.7 and don't have these lines at the end of the file. Commented 3 hours ago
  • @karel - Something prevents me from checking my answer currently. The error message says I must wait until tomorrow to accept my answer. Commented 3 hours ago
  • @quill you have to wait 24 hours to accept your own answer as correct. Commented 3 hours ago
  • I have the same cups version and have no problems. These lines are not at the end of the file. Maybe the file is corrupted. Commented 2 hours ago
  • @pilot6 - I too have such lines further up in the file. The other instances of such lines are not causing a problem. It seems the orphan ones (not within a <whatever> clause) are now offending cups. Commented 1 hour ago
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I just hit this bug on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

> CUPS status:
> 
> ups.service - CUPS Scheduler
>      Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/cups.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
>      Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2025-11-28 23:05:36 PST; 5min ago TriggeredBy: × cups.path
>              × cups.socket
>        Docs: man:cupsd(8)
>     Process: 1464 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/cupsd -l (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)    Main PID: 1464 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
>         CPU: 10ms
> 
> Nov 28 23:05:36 Nagle-LTS systemd[1]: cups.service: Scheduled restart
> job, restart counter is at 5. Nov 28 23:05:36 Nagle-LTS systemd[1]:
> Stopped CUPS Scheduler. Nov 28 23:05:36 Nagle-LTS systemd[1]:
> Dependency failed for CUPS Scheduler. Nov 28 23:05:36 Nagle-LTS
> systemd[1]: cups.service: Job cups.service/start failed with result
> 'dependency>
> 
> ---- sudo cupsd -t Unknown directive JobPrivateAccess on line 94 of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf" contains errors.

This was reported as a Ubuntu bug in 2024 and was "fixed" by an update. See

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/817322

Seems to have been broken by some new update.

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