Knowledge Base

Common Mac Printing Issues

General Printing

How do I set up printing on my Mac and make it work with PaperCut?

Mac printing is a complex topic and answers will very depending on the operating system used on the server side. Chapter 21 in the PaperCut User Guide addresses many of the common questions. Refer to this as the first step:

http://www.papercut.com/products/ng/manual/ch-mac-printing.html

I get the message "Unable to get printer status (client-error-forbidden)!" when printing from the workstation.

A common cause of this problem is that the Mac workstation/clients are in a different subnet from the server. One of the idiosyncrasies of CUPS on Mac is that it's default security configuration is only allow printer access from systems in the same subnet (i.e. tight default security - a little too tight!). The work around for this is to use LPR between the workstation and the server rather than IPP. In other words:

  • Ensure that LPR is enabled on the print queues on the server. See the "LRP checkbox" on this screen-shot.
  • Add the printer on the workstation as an LPR/LPD printer rather than IPP.

Technically it is possible to hack the CUPS configuration file to open up access, however future updates overwrite the file so using LPR as a work around is a simpler choice.

Rips, Fiery, Plotters and Advanced Drivers

I am running PaperCut with a Fiery Rip or using an OCE Plotter. When I configured the workstations to print directly to the device, everything works as normal. However when I configure the workstations to print via server based print queues, the selected print options I select are being ignored. How can I fix this?

This is a common issue with many Fiery Rip drivers and some plotters and other printers. This not a PaperCut issue but is due to broken/buggy PPD based driver supplied with these devices. Fortunately we have however managed to find a work-around.

The issue is that the Postscript filter on the server are incorrectly "re-rendering" the job when it passes through, and this action resets the settings. All rendering should be done on the clients and no modification should be done on the server. The problem is due to bad filter/mime configuration in the printer's PPD file.

What should happen: 

   [workstation (raster to Postscript)] ---> [server (already postscript so no changes required)] ---> [printer/RIP]

The problem: 

   [workstation (raster to Postscript)] ---> [server (re-rendered to postscript)] ---> [printer/RIP]

We've managed to resolve this issue by replacing the drivers on the server with the standard Apple Generic Postscript Driver. The manufacturer supplied drivers are still used on the workstation, so you still have all the normal options, but the use of the Generic driver on the server prevents modification as the job passes through the server's queues.

To install:

  1. Set up the printer/plotter/rip on the server using the Generic Postscript Driver. Set up as a socket, jet direct, or LPR printer pointing directly to the device's IP.
  2. Ensure the printer is shared via Server Admin.
  3. Set up the printer/plotter on each workstation using the manufacture supplied driver. Set up as an IPP or LPR printer pointing to the Server (not to the device). See this Chapter for more detail.

Host-Only Printers

I have a print such as the Epson Stylus Pro 4800 that only provides host based drivers that does not work with Mac OS X Server based queues. Can PaperCut support this printer?

A host-only printer is a printer which does not support shared network based server queues. Unfortunately host-only printers still exist on the Mac. For example many Epson and Canon drivers are simply "ports" of the old Mac Classic drivers to OS X. Hence they are very limited, do not follow standard CUPS guidelines, and only work when the system is directly connected to the printer. (The Classic drivers where never designed for OS X Server queues) Some host-only printers can be shared when the Generic Postscript Driver is used on the workstation side as discussed above, however many drivers such as some Epson printers have issues with this method. For example, the native drivers may offer advanced color features that are not available in the Generic Drivers hindering the printer use. PaperCut is able to support these legacy host-only drivers with some additional configuration and setup.

Because host-only printers can't be configured to use server based queues, the print monitor and analysis needs to be done directly on the workstation before it's sent to the printer. In affect, the printer is a "directly attached" printer and can be supported using the procedure as discussed in Chapter 13:

Here is a summary of the required setup:

1. Nominate a number (one or more) systems that will be configured to use the host-only printers. In an education environment, you'd usually select Lab systems located close to the printer.
2. Set these nominated system(s) as per the manufacturer's guideline. Verify that printing works as expected. Make sure this is the case before moving to the next step.
3. Install the PaperCut Secondary Server Installation option (in the DMG) on this system. Follow the secondary server install options as discussed in the manual here:
http://www.papercut.com/products/ng/manual/ch-secondary-print.html
4. In the print-provider.conf file enter the IP of the primary server in the setting: 
         ApplicationServer=<primary server's IP address>
5. If you will have more than one system printing to the host-only printer, PaperCut will add a printer instance for each workstation. The multiple printer instance will make management hard (e.g cost changes will need to be applied to each instance). To have all printer instances list under the one, you could alias this system name so all workstations report usage under the one "virtual server" name. Add the following line to the print-provider.conf file: 
         ServerName=HostOnly
6. Run the Control Printer Monitoring.command program in: 
        /Applications/PaperCut NG/providers/print/mac
and ensure that monitoring is only enabled on the host only printer.
7. Now printing will be monitored at the local system level and the usage details posted across to the primary server in real time. Perform some testing and verify that the system is working and track printing as expected.

Categories: Printers, Troubleshooting

Keywords: queue, lost driver options, apple

Page last modified on November 20, 2008, at 06:33 PM