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Printer Support for Hardware Checking using SNMP
PaperCut supports validation of page count analysis using the SNMP counters on a printer. More information about this can be found in the manual: Validating Page Counts
In order to determine the number of pages printed, we look at the difference of the SNMP page counter before and after the job is printed. The SNMP standard for printers provides a standard page counter that we use as a fall back but it does not take into consideration such things as whether the page was color or not. In order to determine this, we need to look at the manufacturer's custom metrics which is expressed in what is called an enterprise MIB. The custom metrics naturally vary per manufacturer and sometimes vary between the models of the manufacturer. As there are a vast number of manufacturers and models of printers, we will need to continually build up our database of this information and may call upon the customer to help us gather this information if their printer is not supported.
How can I determine if my printer is supported for Hardware Checking?
On Windows you can run:
[app-path]\providers\print\[platform]\pc-print-monitor.exe -p -h [printer-ip]
On Mac/Linux/Novell you can run:
[app-path]/providers/print/[platform]/pc-print-monitor -p -h [printer-ip]
If the printer is a color printer, then it should, at least, output the "color_count" for the printer in order to be able to retrieve how many color pages were printed in a document. If the only *_count metric is the marker_count, then only basic page counting is supported.
How can I help collect SNMP data for my printer in order to send to PaperCut support?
We have developed a command-line tool to interactively guide a user through the process of performing a sequence of tests which will collect SNMP data. It will require you to print out some provided sample documents in the directory:
[app-path]\providers\print\[platform]\testdocs\*.pdf
with a few driver settings.
Please do the following steps:
On Windows:
cd [app-path]\providers\print\[platform]\- run
run-snmp-printer-test.bat - Follow the instructions in the program in the console window.
- When you have completed the test zip up the snmp-results directory and send it to support
On Linux/Mac/Novell:
- In a terminal shell
cd [app-path]/providers/print/[platform]/./pc-print-monitor -t- Follow the instructions in the program in the console window.
- When you have completed the test zip up the snmp-results directory and send it to support
Categories: Hardware Checking
Keywords: validating validation page counts hardware checks snmp
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