Mapping Virtual Printer Queues with SCCM

[Zoatibix]

Hello,

 

We have recently replaced our Xerox printers with shiny new Ricoh ones. Each campus now has it's own pair of virtual printer queues (one for Mono, one for Colour).

 

I'm trying to use SCCM with Parallels to remove the existing printers, install the print driver and then map the print queues.

 

I've set up a Task Sequence that just affects machines based on their OU in AD.

 

Step 1 - removing old printers works.

 

Step 2 - install the newest Ricoh drivers package seems to work okay, too. (If I later remove the dodgy printers and simply re-add them I can print okay.)

 

Step 3 - I'm using this code to install the printers:

 

lpadmin -p PS-B-FollowYouColourPS -L "" -E -v lpd://PS-B.ourdomain/FollowYou -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/RICOH MP C3004ex"

 

(I then run a second line to set the Mono queue.)

 

The printer does appear but if send a job from a MAC it doesn't show up on the printer. I think that's because I'm not installing the virtual printer queue (I've noted that the printers installed by this method lack "Virtual campus" under the printer's location.

 

I've tried pushing a profile to the mac with the printer instead but unfortunately, that isn't working either.

 

Questions:

 

1. Can I map a virtual print queue with a script like this?

2. If not, how can I do this?

 

Thank you in advance.

[Mrpower]

Hello

Are you able to send prints to the Ricoh printer without using your virtual print queues? I.E adding the printers manually on a Mac and seeing if they print.

[Zoatibix]

Hello,

 

No - our VLANing is set up so that folks can't see the printers directly.

 

I can add the Virtual Print Queue by hand on each iMac and can print successfully.

 

Thank you.

[Zoatibix]

Right, I appear to have figured this out. Partly a typo on my side of things.

 

I’d tried enabling the LPD service on both the local and central print servers but alas it did not help.

 

I did a comparison the entries in CUPS for the working and non-working versions of the printer.

 

I noticed that CUPS displayed the printers a little differently but also there were two key differences in Setup.

 

1. The working setup uses SMB:// instead of LPD://

2. The queue was missing ‘PS’ at the end of the queue name. D’oh!

 

I’ve amended the script as shown and tested with a couple of different accounts.

 

#!/bin/bash

 

lpadmin -p PS-B-FollowYouMonoPS -L "" -E -v smb://ps-b.mydomain/FollowYouMonoPS -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/RICOH MP C3004ex"

 

exit

 

 

Jobs are now releasing as they should from the printers when users request them! So that is now working.

 

However, I’m not sure if the PaperCut Client on the macs is working as it should. It displays and updates the users balance, it gives a warning that the job is held in a queue and needs to be authorised. But when I first send a job to print on a particular machine I get prompted to enter my network credentials (although I can add them to my keychain). Is this intended behaviour? I thought it was meant to transparently pass the credentials through.

 

Lastly, as a quality of life thing, is there a way of telling the Macs that ‘Internal Tray 2’ is installed? It’s where our A3 paper sits but I can’t find a way of setting that other than each user manually setting it.

[Mrpower]

Hi

Congratulations on your solution. With regards to your A3 / second tray, I would suggest that you can put something in your CUPS code string that would tell the Mac that the second tray is installed. There might be something on https://www.cups.org/documentation.html that might help.

 

I seem to remember in the past with a PaperCut server and a my Mac the client software also asked for authorisation when printing. In my case I think the problem was due to the fact my Mac account name was different from the server account name, so it always asked for authorisation. I.E. I mean that my Mac was not bound to the AD and the AD was not authorising my Mac to print.