Deploying Printers to Use Print Server Queue

[sausysadmin]

I am trying to clarify how we can deploy our printers from our Windows Print Server using Casper Suite. We want to make sure that we can continue to use our print server queue and NOT have local direct connections, but we do need to add the correct drivers and configure our printers on our Mac clients.

In my muddled understanding is that we can use snapshot to configure adding a printer connection with LPD with the driver and configuration of printer, and then push this to our users that need this printer? Do we still need to add this printer to Casper Admin? Can someone that is using a windows print server environment with LPD for their Mac OS clients clarify this process?

Thanks

[frozenarse]

For 99% of our printers we stick with the 'Generic PostScript Printer' driver so i'm not sure how much this will help.

On a clean machine we add a printer using the Print server and queue name. After that Launch Casper Admin and click on the 'Add Printers' button. We then make a self service policy that contains that printer.

If they need a specific driver, we get the latest version from the manufacturer (ex Sharp) and install that PKG on the clean machine prior to adding the printer. Upload that driver PKG to Casper Admin and include it in any policies you use to deploy.

We don't try to capture any additional configurations like 3rd tray glossy, saddle stitch, robot delivery....

[thomasC]

We use Casper Admin to grab printer mappings. Configure the LPD settings and driver on a system with Casper Admin installed, then use the Add Printer feature in Casper Admin. Use a policy or Casper Remote to add drivers and printer mapping. Depending on the print driver installer we sometimes use Composer. Most .pkgs work fine as is.

[blackholemac]

I can speak to experience for us on this one. Normally we are the opposite...we prefer doing LPD straight to the printer; HOWEVER, we implemented a new system at our high school called "Follow Me Printing". Basically the teacher user can print to this print queue on any machine, then visit any one of our centralized Konica copier units (one of about 5 different models) and release the job . Unfortunately, Konica really only allows this to work with a Windows Server print queue and still have job tracking so I had to change up our methods for this printer that they wanted to deploy.

So what we did was to setup the server queue on Windows Server 2008R2 to use PostScript as it tends to work better on the Mac in my experience. On the Mac client side, we installed the most full featured Konica driver as the driver and then we established a connection to the server queue. I then uploaded that to Casper Admin and deployed it out to all the teacher workstations. The key is to find the driver that works best for you. If you use all HP printers say, there is an HP universal driver. If you use Konica copies, we found that the fullest featured driver seems to work fine for all models of copier. Let me know what type of actual printers are being used and I might have some suggestions to offer.

[sausysadmin]

Thanks for your responses

To thomasC: Can you explain what you mean by "grab printer mappings? What machine are you using with Casper Admin, the main JSS server?
To blackholemac: We have a varied environment of printers with Lexmark, Kyocera, HP, and Sharp. So, what you uploaded to Casper Admin is the shared printer from the Print Server? So, that means once this model of printer is deployed that printer is using the Windows Print Server as the queue? If this is all true can you quickly edit a file or package or something for this process when you have lots of individual print queues, since each of our printers has their own queue.

Thanks

[stevewood]

Here are the steps:

1. On any Mac (your machine, a user's machine, a test machine, whatever), configure all of the printers you want to ingest into the JSS (Casper). Make sure you have the appropriate drivers loaded, make the LPD connection, adjust whatever settings you need to adjust (paper deck, finishing, whatever).

2. On that same machine, run Casper Admin and use the Add Printers button in Casper Admin to capture the printers that you set up in step 1.

That's all there is to getting printers into the JSS. Casper Admin grabs the information out of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and uses that to configure the printers on a client workstation. Now that you have them in the JSS, you can setup a policy to install via Self Service, or install as part of the policy.

Since you are grabbing the config from the Mac, if you set it up as an LPD printer connected to your print server, then that is what will get deployed to your end users.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[thomasC]

@sausyadmin: sorry for that. By grab I mean Casper Admin will collect info on a Mac that has the printer settings you would like to deploy. Use a test Mac. Steve gives a good explanation of steps.

[blackholemac]

Steve outlines the steps well...that is basically what I do even with the "Follow Me Printer." I basically set up the printers on my admin workstation and then have Casper Admin ingest them all. You can do that with multiple server Windows Server queues though...set the queue up on the server, connect to the queue using Printers and Faxes on a Mac client, make sure you can print to it and then have Casper Admin ingest it. That works with Windows Server queues, LPD queues, etc. As for a driver to use, you will likely need to connect to multiple queues on the workstation since you are not trying to do a "Follow Me Printer" setup. This way you can do a queue on a driver by driver basis. I would recommend pushing the Lexmark driver package, the HP driver package, the Kyocera driver package and any other printer packages you would need from Apple's support website BEFORE pushing the queues out to your Macs.