Add printer using generic driver

[VintageMacGuy]

We are using PaperCut to manage some printers. In short, it takes the print job from the computer, and passes it off to any printer that the user swipes their badge. You set up ONE printer on the Mac and it will let you print to any of the printers in the Building/Company.

We have a building where they have printers of different makes (HP / Canon / Konica Minolta / Whatever). That requires the one printer setup to use the "Generic Postscript Driver" that is included in the Mac OS, rather than a printer/company specific driver. The idea being the generic driver is the lowest common denominator and should work across all devices.

JAMF shows the way to add a printer is to set it up on a Mac like you normally would for a user, then import it into JAMF with JAMF Admin. Then create a policy to deploy that printer plus do an install of the driver for the printer and scope it out as normal.

I did that - however there is no "Generic Postscript Driver" install .pkg to add to the policy. I figured it was already installed on every Mac for the past decade, so should be good to go. 

NOPE

I run the policy through Self Service on a couple test machines. On my M1 with Monterey, it tries to install and fails - but there is no failure of the install listed in the JAMF console when I look at that Macs history. On my Intel Mac running Catalina - the Self Service policy spins indefinitely, also creating no printer and no log.


I have other policies that I have created with a driver for a specific model printer and it works fine. The main difference is that I am trying to use the built-in generic driver and don't have a package to deploy with that driver.

I have seen some threads talking about scripting this out, but was not sure they fit my scenario, and they were about 5 years old - so not even sure if those solutions would still work.

Anyone else able to deploy a printer with a generic PS driver via policy? How?

[junjishimazaki]

Is this the guide you are following? https://www.papercut.com/help/manuals/print-deploy/roll-out-the-client/deploy-jamf/

[VintageMacGuy]

No - that looks like it is for deploying a piece of software related to PaperCut. We are not doing that. Just a normal printer setup.

[junjishimazaki]

I don't think you can do this like a normal print setup since you are using a managed print service to manage the print jobs.

I found this in the Jamf Nation forum in regards to deploying Papercut https://community.jamf.com/t5/jamf-pro/papercut-ppclient-setup/m-p/258386#M239065

You can also look at this. https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/UseJamfProToDeployPrintersOnManagedMacOSDevices#steps

[VintageMacGuy]

We have three main sites. The first two sites have a homogeneous print environment, so we are able to use a normal print setup for them and that has worked fine since those are able to use the .pkg from the manufacturer to deploy the driver. 

The generic driver doesn't have a package to be able to add to JAMF. That is what I think is causing the issue. That is the only difference between what we are doing now versus what we have been doing.

To simplify this even more - and eliminate the focus on papercut - let's say I have an old printer that I want to use, and it works great with the Generic PS Driver built in to MacOS. How do I deploy that to others with the same printer via JAMF? There is no Generic PS Driver package to add to the printer deployment. 

[junjishimazaki]

When you upload the printer using Jamf Admin. In your Jamf instance-->Settings-->Computer Management-->Printer->name of the printer you uploaded. Go to Definition. At the bottom you should see the option Use generic PPD file.

[VintageMacGuy]

Brilliant - thank you - I will give this a try.

[VintageMacGuy]

This seems to be working. I can now install this on my test machines without errors or failures. Thank you. I am going to test tomorrow with someone on site to see if I can actually get words on paper.

[junjishimazaki]

Great, thanks for the update.

[dlondon]

At our location we use mainly one brand with a series of printers that use the same mega driver so with the main Global queue it works fine with Papercut.

For some of the odd printers (like large format plotters), they made some other queues and people have to install them from Self Service.

This way they can get a better feature set from the print driver