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Printer Deployment problems

  • October 11, 2013
  • 3 replies
  • 18 views
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So first let me state the problem. I have set up a printer and drivers via composer to deploy and setup a printer on a mac. I think we are very close. When I hit the "Install" button in self service, it does its thing, and I can print to the printer but the page is VERY faint and I dont have the correct printer functions (Such as switching from black and white to color)

If I manually add a printer the driver is there after using self service, but I dont think it is selecting it correctly.

I have added the Printers in
Management Settings -> Computer Management -> Printers
I also added the correct PPD file in the "Definition" section.

I then used Composer to grab the correct files using
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=37
(I am using LDP://IP address, and the UFRII drivers)

I then used Casper Admin to upload the packages and then I created the policy
Added the package I created for the UFRII driver
With Fill User template, fill existing directories, update autorun data are all unchecked. Distribution point: Specific file share distribution point
File share distribution point: Set to the correct point
And force file sharing over AFP/SMB is also checked

But it works... just not quite correctly. It is clearly not selecting the correct driver. I manually added the same printer, using the drivers CASPER pushed to the machine and it worked fine. Pulling open the "Driver" tab on the mac showed the correct version (In this case 10.2), but the driver version on the printer casper deployed said 1.0. If anyone has any ideas or suggestion I would greatly appreciate them!

    3 replies

    T
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    • TomDay
    • Honored Contributor
    • October 12, 2013

    Well I don't have an exact fix for how you are trying to accomplish this but here is how we do it.

    All of our machines have a pkg that we run on them that we created to install a boatload of drivers for the printers we have around campus. So each machine will have the driver locally installed. From there I add a printer to any machine with the proper lpd port assign the correct driver. This machine has Casper Admin on it of course, then I open Casper Admin, add this printer into the JSS, create the policy in self service, scope it etc. Then when a user is in Self Service and installs this newly available printer to their machine, it runs the policy to install the printer and when it looks for the driver that was associated with it on the initial install, it knows where to find it. Case closed. Deploying printers with Casper saves our Team hundreds of hours.

    I hope this helps out in some fashion!

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    • wlcasey
    • New Contributor
    • October 15, 2013

    Hi -

    My standard printer setup process is essentially the same as described by tommyday (above), except that I tend to parse out the drivers some with a package for each Mfg/type. So I create, as an example, an install job with the factory installers for HP Laser Printers in the B/W Laser Jet type and one for HL Color Laser Jet printers and one for Xerox and one for Epson XXXX. Then I have been using the standard "setup the printer on the admin computer and upload the setup via Casper Admin app" model. It works for almost everything. Every once in a while I find "people" want to have a non standard printer setup with special names or some such custom config. These cases ofter require that I get out the "lpadmin" command. I create a separate policy for that kind of install and put the lpadmin into the "run this command" field under Advanced... You could create a shell script for that if you wanted greater control too. See http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.6/ref-printers-conf.html for the lpadmin bits...

    I agree though, without Casper you end up with all of these custom installers and you end up with a huge migraine when it comes to printer setups. But then, I find that for many things that Casper solves for me... ;-)

    Oh, and if you can put all the printers into self service, you should do that too....

    W
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    • wlcasey
    • New Contributor
    • October 15, 2013

    Err, sorry, use this link for lpadmin...

    http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.6/man-lpadmin.html

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