How to disable CUPS printer server permanently

Question

Lately i have to reboot my system because ,CUPSD -f loads lot of log files and consumes lot of space , I have tried all options with lot of frustration i have to reboot my system again.

I have done this third time, and always this issue bothered me,

Kindly let me know how i can completely remove or eliminate ,CUPS printer server from my computer, i am not going to use this server any more.

any suggestions are welcome

Solution 1

disable the start script as root (do sudo -i) with:

echo manual > /etc/init/cups.override
echo manual > /etc/init/cups-browsed.override

And then reboot

Solution 2

You can remove the cups package with the package manager. Try a command like:

apt-get remove cups

Unless cups is trying to print something it shouldn't require much in the way of resources. If you are running short on memory try adding some swap space. You can add use a file for additional swap space if you don't have anywhere to create a swap partition.

You can disable and stop the service with the commands:

systemctl disable cups.service
systemctl stop cups.service

The default configuration is quite restrictive and should not allow remote access. Patching is relatively frequent as printer support is fixed, translations updated, and interaction with systemd is adjusted. There have been a few security issues resolved in recent patches.

Comments

[gman]

The reason to remove it is security and time. Every couple of weeks there are updates to cups. I haven't printed anything in > 10 yrs so why put up with cups updates every couple of weeks. I just installed 20.04. The first thing it did is download updates which included several cups component updates.

[Gediminas]

why it gives "bash: /etc/init/cups.override: Permission denied" even with sudo?