Printers

[#1]

Hello,
I am using Casper Suite 3.2 and have run into some difficulties with duplicate printers. Overtime, I somehow uploaded printers with the same name twice into 2 different groups. In a cleanup measure, they were all moved to the same group and duplicates deleted. Now Casper Admin shows all the correct printers but when I launch Casper to install the printers, I can see the duplicates. On the JSS server I can see all the duplicates and deleted printers listed in the PPD folder. I tried deleting one of the printers that is no longer displaying in Casper Admin but it continues to show up in Casper. Any thoughts on how I might reconcile these two lists?

Can I simply delete all the printers from Casper Admin and the PPD folder then reupload them?

Betty
Star Tribune

[#2]

I have been trying to map printers using policies and it appears hit or miss. I check in inventory in the JSS and it shows the printers are mapped, but the user cannot see them when they are trying to print, nor do they show up in Printer admin. Ideas?

Karl H. Hehr
Technology/Curriculum Director
South Hamilton CSD
www.s-hamilton.k12.ia.us
515.827.5418 (W)
515.209.9767 (C)
515.827.5368 (F)

Luddite by Degrees
1) Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2) Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3) Anything invented after you're 35 is again the natural order of things --- Douglas Adams

[#3]

How can I add a printer to the JSS programmatically? Does anyone know of a supported way to do so? Or, has anyone tried to do so in an unsupported way (SQL...)?

I recently received a list of the 497 printers we have here, and would like to add them as Self Service policies by building and floor. I can easily script the data conversions, but I need to find a way for the script to dump the printers into the JSS. Bonus points if I can automatically create the policies.

[tlarkin]

Do you have to bundle all printers into one policy/package? If so just copying the /etc/cups directory after installing all printers should capture all the PPDs in composer. Then you can just push out that directory to all your macs.

[#5]

I think I've figured out how to add the printers themselves to the JSS. They seem to all be stored in a single SQL table. But policies tend to be spread out across several tables; I'd like to make sure I get them all. And I'd like the process to be repeatable.

Any suggestions for that part?

(In case it matters, we have 7.31 here.)

[#6]

There will be about two dozen policies; each one will contain roughly 1-75 printers. Adding 497 printers locally is far from trivial, as far as I know...

The PPDs are already installed on all the Macs; there are only five models in use anyway. Unfortunately, it looks like I need to include the full contents of the appropriate PPD into each SQL record; this will take a fair chunk of space, just for the temporary files. They are very complex printers, after all.

I will look into the policy tables in the SQL to find out what I will need to modify. Does anyone know if there are any other tables I will need to look at?

[#7]

These are the tables I found that appear to contain relevant data:

printers
policies
policy_printers
policy_group_memberships
jss_context_updates

Can anyone think of any others that I need to look at? Does anyone know anything about the fields in the `jss_context_updates` table? My suspicion is that I can set the last_modified_date and increment the sequence from the highest number in the table, but I can't be sure.

[nessts]

I hate to distract everybody from the important happenings today, but, I have not played much with printers in casper yet and my first attempt is a bust.

I have two Xerox Fiery printers, that need the special Xerox700 print driver which is not an Apple package but some other packaing tool.
first how have people been deploying that, this could be my whole problem.
I just installed using composer to do a normal snapshot package,

then I created a self service policy to install that driver, and then install the two printers that I imported from a machine that had them configured properly.

well after using the self service to install the printers on a third machine the driver was not chosen, the settings for trays and finishers were not set. etc.

any clues would be extremely helpful.

--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[Matt]

Todd you're killing the vibe this morning!!!!!

:D
--
Matt Lee, CCA/ACMT/ACPT/ACDT
Senior IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group

[noah_swanson]

So I can view all attached printers on one device by drilling down to the inventory, However is there a way to see all printers connected to all machines? We don't inventory and assign 100% of the printers used, so this would be helpful to know who to push out updates to.

Doesn't matter if it's in the JSS or through a MySQL query; I'd just like to see this information without going to each computer in inventory.

Thanks,
Noah Swanson
Imaging Specialist
Enterprise Desktop Services
Phone: 309-765-3153
SwansonNoah at johndeere.com

[talkingmoose]

So I can view all attached printers on one device by drilling down to the inventory, However is there a way to see all printers connected to all machines? We don’t inventory and assign 100% of the printers used, so this would be helpful to know who to push out updates to.
On 9/9/11 9:20 AM, "Swanson Noah" <SwansonNoah at JohnDeere.com<mailto:SwansonNoah at JohnDeere.com>> wrote:

Just a suggestion. I'd approach this from a different angle.

Do you know which machines should have certain printers? I'd scope a policy or use Managed Preferences to automatically add printers based on location (IP address). Or use Self Service to allow users to install their own printers.

Trying to get a list of differences between machines and using it to patch where needed can be tedious depending on your environment.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

[noah_swanson]

No, at this point we want to inventory what ones are used then manage those through casper. Also to know what print drivers to deliver via SWUPD.

[kerouak]

i have a script to map printers if u need it???