Managing Printers

Roger-

we had issues using printers that were created using casper admin on OS verison 10.4 and trying to use them for 10.5
If we created the printer in 10.4 and sent it or self serviced to 10.4 mac we had success.
We had to create a 10.5 printer for macs with OS 10.5.x.

to create the printers, load a mac with all the drivers and set up all your printers. Next open casper admin and "add Printers"

Dan

We don't have 10.4, but I had issues with printers between 10.5 and 10.6.

What I ended up doing was adding separate 10.5 and 10.6 printers and
scoping each printer to the appropriate OS. In policies, I just
include both printers and the client will get the one appropriate to
its OS.

Maura

Maura Fennelly
Technology Department
Archbishop Mitty High School
mfennelly at mitty.com
408.324.4243

We do the same as everyone else has stated, add a printer to Casper Admin for each OS; 10.5, 10.6, etc.

Craig E

Okay, maybe I'm missing how to do this, but how are you adding separate
printers for each OS? Are you changing the name of the printer?

So, for example, if I had a printer named Homer I would add a Homer_10.5 and
a Homer_10.6? Or is there some other Casper-Fu that I'm missing?

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

If you are dealing with printers that are in a mixed OS environment, yes you’d have to distinguish the name. This would be the case in our offices. If you do not Casper Admin will likely not recognize that there is another printer to add.

Our labs are not an issue since a lab is always on the same OS version. So I delete the previous printer, and add a new one of the same name when a lab is upgraded/rotated.

Craig E

thats what we did
since we have eliminated 10.4 and have them all set back at homer just to keep it clean.

So if you have 200 printers you are going to end up with at least 400 setup printers (Maybe more) for a mixed OS environment.

Seems like there must be a better way.

On Apr 1, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Dan DeRusha wrote:

thats what we did since we have eliminated 10.4 and have them all set back at homer just to keep it clean. Begin forwarded message:

If you are dealing with printers that are in a mixed OS environment, yes you’d have to distinguish the name. This would be the case in our offices. If you do not Casper Admin will likely not recognize that there is another printer to add. Our labs are not an issue since a lab is always on the same OS version. So I delete the previous printer, and add a new one of the same name when a lab is upgraded/rotated. Craig E On Apr 1, 2010, at 1:11 PM, Steve Wood wrote: Okay, maybe I'm missing how to do this, but how are you adding separate printers for each OS? Are you changing the name of the printer? So, for example, if I had a printer named Homer I would add a Homer_10.5 and a Homer_10.6? Or is there some other Casper-Fu that I'm missing? Steve Wood Director of IT swood at integer.com The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201 T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475 On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Ernst, Craig S. <ERNSTCS at uwec.edu> wrote: We do the same as everyone else has stated, add a printer to Casper Admin for each OS; 10.5, 10.6, etc. Craig E On 4/1/10 12:23 PM, "Roger Corbin" <rcorbin at mac.com> wrote: Just curious how many of you manage printers ? We have tried a number of things. Managing from Casper has sometimes been hit and miss. I think one of the problems is that we have so many different versions of the Mac OS ranging from 10.3.9 right up to 10.6.3. The command line and paths to the PDD's does seem to vary a bit. We have 50 sites and probably several hundred printers in total. I could set them all up in Self Service and make them available, but it seems like that list is going to get very large. I've also thought of creating a script for adding each printer, but I take it that this is probably what Casper does internally anyway. This is the format that I know about. lpadmin -p Printer_Name -L "Printer Location" -E -v lpd://x.x.x.x -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/Printer_Driver.gz But that path to the PPD's is different on Snow Leopard. I thought I might be able to make the script a bit more fancy and have it determine the OS version using a command like sw_vers -productVersion and then have it go to a different PPD path depending on the version. Has any one used any other products for managing printers ? Roger Corbin Richmond School District #38

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Less printing and printers...of course if you’re a publishing company. =)

Maybe jamf has a different workaround, to my knowledge this was how we got it to work consistently.

sorry

Dan

There is another way. Set up one machine to act as a 'cups' server. You then only need one version of a driver, the one that matches the OS of the server. (Assuming that all of your printers are on the network as oppose to locally connected).

Then point each client at the cups server in /etc/cups/client.conf

We have a linux box here as a cups server. The macs print fine.

Sean