When trying to print files from a remote Red Hat 6.0 system
to a Red Hat 6.0 lpd spool, the print daemon dies. The error
log is filled with a message

Jun 16 15:55:18 nfs lpd[11408]: Can't create temp cfp file
Jun 16 15:55:18 nfs last message repeated 1016 times
Jun 16 15:55:18 nfs lpd[11408]: lp: can't scan
/var/spool/lpd/lp

The problem is in file 'printjob.c' (under the 'lpd'
directory) in the 'sendit' routine. The lpr spool command
has been modified to put control files into the spool
directory that are appended with the name of the system
sending the job, rather than the fixed-size control file
names that were previously the norm. The problem is that the
file name is assumed to be that fixed size, and the last six
characters of that fixed size are overwritten with XXXXXX
and handed off to mktemp(). So you get stuff like
"cf134a1XXXXXXebes" (the XXX's are overwritting part of the
host name, which would not have been there for a local print
job) rather than a useful string for 'mktemp'.  The problem
is that if the last character of the string is not an "X",
mktemp() returns a null string, and you get the message in
question!

My solution: just write a 0 after the last 'X' to terminate
the string. The filenames for the temp files will still be
unique because the print job names are incremented and are
in that first 7 characters. Here is my patch:
-------------------------start patch--------------------
--- printjob.c.orig	Tue Feb 16 13:01:45 1999
+++ printjob.c	Wed Jun 16 16:05:30 1999
@@ -770,6 +770,7 @@
 	  {
 	    dup_cfpname = strdup(file);
 	    memcpy((dup_cfpname+7), "XXXXXX", 6);
+            dup_cfpname[13]=0;  /* fix by eric! */
 	    mktemp(dup_cfpname);
 	    tmpmask = umask(007);
 	    dup_cfp=fopen(dup_cfpname, "w");
---------------------end of patch--------------------

That should fix *THIS* bug, at least...

Eric Lee Green  eric
SysAdmin/Software Engineer
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc. ("The BRU Guys")