Customizing UniFlow Driver with 11x17 PPD

[winterboer]

We use the UniFlow (NtWare) driver to do "follow me" printing with Canon Copiers.

The driver installer has 3 prompts when installing asking for server hostname, a queue name, and one other field that is already populated from the queue name. The PPD installed does not support 11x17 paper. To enable 11x17 you must copy the correct PPD to /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources then edit the printer via the local CUPS web interface and change the PDD to the 11x17 version.

My question is how can I automate this so its one package to deploy? I've tried setting the printer up correctly on a system and then use JAMF Admin to Add a printer and then deploy the PPD via package. None of that works. Does anyone else have experience with this or another method that might work?

[gachowski]

It's been years since I had it working, but it took a two set of files ... One was from recon and one from Cannon... Then I decided that printing was dead.. and just added them with CUPS in the JSS.

Sorry I'm not so much help but I thought I might get you stated in the right direction..

C

[damienbarrett]

It's been a few years since I've had to debug this, but I'm pretty sure that one of the Canon/UniFLOW engineers modified a Universal Canon PPD for us to get us 11x17 printing on all our copiers. He called the file MomUd.ppd. Not sure why. I can share this file with you if you find me on MacAdmins Slack or email me.

I have a .dmg that I built in Casper Composer years ago that puts this PDD in /Library/Printers/Contents/Resources. The .dmg also lays down some settings in ~/Preferences/com.NT-Ware.UniFLOW.plist and /Library/Preferences/com.NT-Ware.UniFLOW.plist. I also wrote a LaunchAgent that makes sure the "Mac Client" software is always set to launch at login.

Sometimes we see some weirdness with the NT-Ware software.

1) sometimes the software writes a damaged cookie file to ~/Library/Cookies/com.NT-ware.pkg.uniflowMacClientWithUniversalDriver.macclient.binarycookies and I have to manually delete this cookie and reboot the machine. Having a bad cookie in place prevents the user from printing. The authentication dialog box and/or the print settings box never show up -- just a quick flash of the outline of the window and then nothing.

2) Sometimes the settings in the UniFLOW software (Mac Client) get blown out so it's not pointing to our print server anymore. We simply manually type in the IP number and port number again, quit the software, then relaunch it. This writes the correct server IP to the prefs files.

[winterboer]

Damien,

I'm going to email you about this.

Thanks so much! Gary

[damienbarrett]

BTW, we also just reached out to our Canon reps to ask them the status on a 64-bit version of the Mac Client software. We won't be running 10.14 until Summer 2019, but we also know that NTWare is sometimes slow and unresponsive and want to give Canon as much time as possible to solve this problem. We figure they have about precisely a year before I begin finalizing our software choices, our images, our approved vendor lists, our hardware pick for our next laptop cycle, etc. If they get back to us with an updated client, I'll email you off list with some info.

[AmigoDeluxe]

Hey @damienbarrett you mention something about a "Universal Canon PPD". Is this something available to all or is it something tailor-made for you? Can you please point us to wherever we could download it from?

Thanks
K

[AmigoDeluxe]

Never mind. I found it here: http://yourUniflowServerName/pwviewer/ClientResources/InstallMacClientWithUDPrintHttps.zip