We noticed that the recent MacOS Sequoia update really messed with our users ability to print.
To cover what has been happening with us, when a user adds a printer from Self Service, the very first print job never brings up the window for them to enter their credentials. Instead just sitting on "Hold for Authentication". Hitting that little refresh button doesn't do anything, and most of the old fixes I found online don't seem to help. Once the user cancels that job, then sends it again, the pop-up happens and everything is good to go from that point on.
So, as a temporary workaround until we can find the actual issue we came up with this little script to send a 'dummy' print job, wait a few seconds to hit the authentication, then cancel the job. So far this has been working great so I wanted to post that script here just in case someone else can make use of it.
Note: Is it just me or is there no Shell/Bash option when pasting code here?
#!/bin/bash
# Get printer name from JAMF variable ($4)
PRINTER_NAME="$4"
# Set log file location
LOG_FILE="/Users/$3/Library/Logs/initial_print_auth_fix.log"
# Start logging
echo "===== Print Test Script Started: $(date) =====" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
# Check if a printer name was provided
if [[ -z "$PRINTER_NAME" ]]; then
echo "Error: No printer name provided. Exiting..." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
exit 1
fi
# Verify if the printer exists
if lpstat -p "$PRINTER_NAME" &>/dev/null; then
echo "Printer found: $PRINTER_NAME" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
echo "Sending test print to $PRINTER_NAME..." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
# Send a dummy print job and log output
lp -d "$PRINTER_NAME" enter/path/to/any/file/really/doesnt/seem/to/matter >> "$LOG_FILE" 2>&1
# Wait for the job to enter the queue
sleep 10
# Get the job ID for the most recent job on this printer
JOB_ID=$(lpstat -o "$PRINTER_NAME" | awk 'NR==1 {print $1}')
if [[ -n "$JOB_ID" ]]; then
echo "Canceling job $JOB_ID on $PRINTER_NAME..." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
cancel "$JOB_ID" >> "$LOG_FILE" 2>&1
else
echo "No job found for $PRINTER_NAME." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
fi
else
echo "Error: Printer '$PRINTER_NAME' not found." | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
exit 1
fi
echo "===== Print Test Script Finished: $(date) =====" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
exit 0
