lpadmin: Unable to create PPD file

JimmyJ
New Contributor

I've got a script to add printers to new computers. I've tested it on a few machines successfully, however it fails on others. The error occurs when using lpadmin to add a printer:

lpadmin -p office -m everywhere -v "ipps://print.my.domain:9164/printers/office"

Which gives ONE of the following errors, it seems to be random which one I get:

lpadmin: Unable to create PPD file: Undefined error: 0
lpadmin: Unable to create PPD file: Interrupted system call

One of the computers it fails on is a freshly installed version of Big Sur 11.6.

Resetting the printing system through System Preferences doesn't help. Adding printers through System Preferences works correctly.

I can't find any information on these errors anywhere, so anything would help.

Thanks! 

2 REPLIES 2

mateow
New Contributor

did you ever figure this out? 

JimmyJ
New Contributor

In my case it appears that newer versions of lpadmin didn't want to play nice with PaperCut Mobility Print printers. I ended up just ignoring Apple's advice and creating a PPD file first. It gives you a couple of warnings about being deprecated but works on all my devices.

 

For the above example I'd use something like this instead:

/System/Library/Printers/Libraries/ipp2ppd ipps://print.my.domain:9164/printers/office everywhere > /tmp/office.ppd
lpadmin -p office -v ipps://print.my.domain:9164/printers/office -P /tmp/office.ppd

 

Hopefully that helps!