How to disable printing service - cupsd?

**abcuser** · October 23rd, 2011

Hi,
using Ubuntu 11.10/Unity 2D. Using two network commands I have found out that cupsd deamon, looks like printing service, is running:

Code:

netstat -a -t tcp localhost | grep LISTEN
tcp        0      0 localhost:ipp           *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp6       0      0 ip6-localhost:ipp       [::]:*                  LISTEN

and

Code:

nmap localhost

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2011-10-23 15:19 CEST
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.0069s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT    STATE SERVICE
631/tcp open  ipp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.44 seconds

It looks like a printing service is running. I don't use any printer on this PC and I would like to disable printing service to reduce security risk as much as possible.

How to stop printing service running on 631 tcp port?
Regards

**tartalo** · October 23rd, 2011

I uninstall it, the added advantages are that you save space in your hard drive and that you will need less updates.

I search for 'cups', 'printing' and 'printer' in Synaptic, there are lot's of packages related printing that you don't need, but read carefully the descriptions because some packages you do need will appear among the results.

You can't unisnstall libcups2 and libcupsimage2, some packages you probably want would go away.

The meta-package ubuntu-desktop must go, although some recommend to keep it to ease dist-upgrades I never had a problem. I wish there was a ubuntu-printing metapackage that was just recommended by ubuntu-desktop.

**ajgreeny** · October 23rd, 2011

If you install bootup manager (bum) from the repos you can stop cups running easily, along with many other services which you may not need.

I assume it is still available for 11.10, but things may have changed.