We have four networked printers that are pushed out to all Macs through our company that are tied to different locations where offices are located across the world. We noticed that these printers have recently started installing duplicates on users' Macs and I cannot figure out why. I have tried to write some scripts to delete duplicate printers on a few test Macs but no luck. This has been working great for about a year and just recently started installed duplicate printers. I have also tested to push multiple printers to my own Mac but it never duplicates after the printer policy runs. Scratching my head on this.
This is what I have setup in Jamf.
1. Printer Policy
Trigger: Login
Execution Frequency: Once per month
Packages: Canon PS Installer pkg
Printer: XXX Printer Action: Map (I also have the ppd printer setup in Jamf Settings)
Maintenance: Update Inventory
Here is the script I am using to try and delete the duplicate printers:
#!/bin/bash
# Check if lpstat is available
if ! command -v lpstat &> /dev/null; then
echo "lpstat could not be found. Please ensure CUPS is installed and running."
exit 1
fi
# Get a list of all installed printers
printers=$(lpstat -p | awk '{print $2}')
# Check if there are any printers installed
if [ -z "$printers" ]; then
echo "No printers found."
exit 0
fi
# Create an array to track printer base names
declare -a printer_basenames
# Function to check if an element exists in an array
element_in_array() {
local element="$1"
shift
for e; do [[ "$e" == "$element" ]] && return 0; done
return 1
}
# Loop through the list of printers
for printer in $printers; do
# Extract the base name of the printer (without numbers or trailing spaces)
base_name=$(echo "$printer" | sed 's/[0-9]*$//')
# Check if the base name is already in the array
if element_in_array "$base_name" "${printer_basenames[@]}"; then
# If it is, this is a duplicate, so delete it
echo "Removing duplicate printer: $printer"
lpadmin -x "$printer"
else
# If it's not, add it to the array
printer_basenames+=("$base_name")
fi
done
echo "Duplicate printers removed."
