Mac OSX standard cups 2.3.1, can't load cups.css

[scottcc]

I know it's an older OS, but would love to find out why cups internals are not vending out cups.css.. Running on 10.15.7, 19H1824 with cups-config saying it's version 2.3.1. The web interface (ssh tunnelling a high level port to privileged 631 on the target box) clearly shows it cannot load cups.css. Trying to do that directly via http:https://localhost:port/cups.css gets one a "Not Found" in the browser, and the following errors in the debug-enabled error log:

D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] [Client 65] Authorized as "scottc" using Basic.
D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] [Client 65] Processing GET /cups.css
D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] PPR: Can't open partial '/usr/share/doc/cups' / 'cups.css' 22/Invalid argument
D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] PPR: Can't open partial '/usr/share/doc/cups' / 'cups.css/en_CA/index.html' 22/Invalid argument
D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] PPR: Can't open partial '/usr/share/doc/cups' / 'cups.css/en/index.html' 22/Invalid argument
D [01/Dec/2023:18:59:56 +0000] PPR: Can't open partial '/usr/share/doc/cups' / 'cups.css/index.html' 22/Invalid argument

I can see the file itself in /usr/share/doc/cups/cups.css, and it does not have odd permissions, and even diffing that with the latest version in the repo here shows zero changes.

Any help is so wildly appreciated. There are no bad suggestions.

Thanks!
./scc