I was loading a real minimum system to act as a web server, so I didn't load any of the normal X binaries due to limited space on the disk (2gig total). However, these doesn't seem to be any convienent way to create printer queues if you can't run printtool (ie, linuxconf doesn't ship with printer support). I solved my particular problem by copying the filters and spool files from another system, but there really should be a way to do sysadmin tasks without X.
Request HIGHLY seconded. This movement to X11 stuff bites us again and again. Especially with printer stuff. As it's clearly not a bug but an enhancement request, I'm changing Severity to "enhancement".
We are using a new printing system. It's medium range goals include the ability to configure printers on one machine and deploy them easily to others.