Norbert, As you write, "cups became completely unusable, as the lpd backend just happens to die with a strange error." For me the problem started with the upgrade to 1.4.7. I had a slightly different symptom, namely that the socket backend would die with status -8 ("crashed"), but only on my HP PSC 2710 printer (not on the Xerox laserprinters at work). I suspect that the cause in your case is the same as in mine; thus, you should be able to use the fix that I describe below.
The Arch linux bug forum at <https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/25204> pointed me to a fix that is in cups upstream (1.4.8 and 1.5.0): <http://www.cups.org/str.php?L3875> Those versions are not yet in the Debian archives, so I applied the upstream patch to 1.4.7. However, before I could recompile cups, I needed to fix a FTBFS due to a problem in some of the ppd files in the hp-ppd package. See BTS #588317 for the report and my patch to fix that problem. Then cups recompiled fine. (Although I had to omit my usual -j3 flag or else the build failed. But that problem will be the subject of a separate bug report, if I can reproduce it reliably.) -Sanjoy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org