PaperCut MF Release History Version 8
Release history for newer versions
For a list of currently known issues with PaperCut MF, see Known Issues with Recent Releases
View the PaperCut MF Release Cycle and Early Access Program.
18 November 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.5 (Build 6741)
This is a bugfix release for PaperCut MF 8.5, and contains the following changes:
Enhancements:
- Major update to the German translation. All system components are now fully translated.
- Updates to Mac and Novell documentation.
Fixes:
- Fixed a problem where the scheduled reports may run with an incorrect date range.
- Improved the robustness of the SSL certificate generation on initial installation if the system is under load.
- Improved reliability of admin application error alerts.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Added support for Konica Minolta 2480MF.
Copier / device integration:
- Added support for "Release Any" mode when using a copier (or copier terminal) as a print release station.
- Ricoh ESA Embedded: Fixed problem that could stop the a configuration file being created on initial installation.
5 November 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.5 (Build 6666)
This is a bugfix release for PaperCut MF 8.5, and contains the following changes:
Enhancements:
- Improved installation instructions for the web widgets.
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where the header of the administration interface would display incorrectly in Internet Explorer 6.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Vista Sidebar Gadgets from working when PaperCut is installed on a Mac server.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Added support for the Dell 1720DN printer.
- Fixed page count problem seen with some Mac drivers when printing from Adobe Photoshop.
- Fixed copy count detection problem seen with some Mac drivers when printing from Adobe Illustrator.
30 October 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.5 (Build 6637)
New features:
- New iPhone and mobile device support for end-user web page features. Allows users to view their balance, environmental impact and redeem TopUp/Prepaid card from their mobile devices. See news for more info. Administrators can also user their iPhone to administer PaperCut.
- Include Vista Gadgets to show user balance and environmental impact. See news for more info.
- Added web widgets which can be used on your Intranet to show user balance and environmental impact.
- Added 9 new reports:
- Department printing - summary
- Office printing - summary
- Printer Environmental Impact - summary
- Printer usage - user summary
- Shared account printing invoice - job type summary
- Shared account Printing - Ratios report
- Group Printing - Ratios report
- Printer usage - Ratios report
- Topup/Prepaid cards report
- On the Mac, display user client messages using Growl notifications if Growl is installed.
- Add support for the CardSmith payment service in the payment gateway module.
Enhancements:
- Display the report parameters at the top of the reports so it is clear what criteria was used to create it.
- Added more filter options to most of the existing reports (e.g. department, office, groups, activity dates, account charged, etc).
- Made more reports available for scheduling and emailing.
- Improved the "job type summary" reports to accurately report color and grayscale page counts for printers using page-level color detection.
- Improved the usability of the Shared Account sync page. It was too easy to enable this option by mistake.
- Improved usability of server commands and web services that started server tasks in the background (e.g. backup or import tasks).
- Improved authentication of users on Active Directory domains where the "guest" account is enabled.
- Allowed the server authentication TTL settings to be overridden by the user client config file or command line options.
- Improved the reliability of importing users/groups from large/slow Active Directory domains.
- Add new server-commands and web services to set/get simple printer costs, set/get group quota allocations, and add new groups.
- Various improvements to the end-user shared accounts page.
- Add links to the "About" page to allow users to more easily add more users to their license or renew their premium support.
- Improved debug logging in user client to help diagnose client startup problems.
- Add a command-line option to the user client to enable debugging mode.
- Various documentation improvements.
- Updated translations for Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Spanish, Italian and Czech.
Fixes:
- Fixed rare problem in release station that could cause it to stop responding.
- Changed application server service configuration to stop the service being restarted under very high system CPU load.
- Fixed problem displaying PDF reports in Czech.
- Sort the transaction log report so that the latest transactions are listed first.
- Sort the user list report by username.
- Improved the Mac user client logon hook script to ensure that any existing/zombie user client processes are stopped when a new user logs in.
- Novell: Improved auto-detection of eDirectory LDAP settings.
- Novell: Automatically remove the server context from the usernames when recording print job information.
- Fixed an error when scheduling reports if using Oracle database.
- Improved system reliability after the configured external database was unavailable for a period.
- Net Control: Fixed problem when using Squid proxy on Linux to authenticate with Windows. The domain component of the username was not being correctly stripped from the username.
- Updated timezone information to support the latest Daylight-savings and other timezone information.
- Fixed a problem on new linux installs that would causes print popups to be slower than they should be.
- Improved reliability of the PayPal Payflow link integration.
- Updated the internal database version for improved performance and stability.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved page count for HP 5500 PCL6 drivers.
- Improved document name reporting when printing from Mac Adobe applications to Windows print queues.
- Improved color detection for the HP Color Laser Jet 3500 PCL 6 driver.
- Added support for Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5100 and related printers on the Mac.
- Improved page size detection to ensure the page length is reported correctly for linear charging model.
- Improved page size detection when printing to some HP printers from Adobe Indesign on the Mac.
Copier / device integration:
- Improved recording of copying when different types of copying are performed in a single copier session. E.g. combinations of color, grayscale, duplex, and different paper sizes.
- Sharp OSA Embedded: Added support for authentication using USB card readers.
- Sharp OSA Embedded: Allow the welcome logo to be customized for each site.
- Ricoh ESA Embedded: Included the officially approved version of the Ricoh embedded application.
- Improved handling of checking VCC status while copier sessions are in progress. This will improve reliability on less reliable networks.
- Pay Station: Improved handling of the Apex 500 note reader. If the transaction cannot be completed to the server then return the note to the user.
- Pay Station: When there is a problem connecting to the server, retry 3 times. This can improve reliability when transient network errors occur.
- Pay Station: Add support for the Microcoin note and coin acceptors.
- Update Copicode firmware to version 1.2.1, which includes:
- Improved support for the 'per device' authentication options available since version 8.4.
- Set default configuration values for skipping menu on start and finish.
- Fixed account selection menu bug fixed when a user is allowed to select the personal account and select by code only (not by list).
10 September 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.4 (Build 6402)
Enhancements:
- Various minor clarifications to terminology used in the user interface.
- Various documentation improvements, including large improvements to the print authentication chapter.
Fixes:
- Fixed problem running scheduled report when multiple ad hoc parameters are used.
- Fixed problem populating the LDAP defaults during initial installation.
- Added a time-out when attempting to establish a connection with the database. This can improve reliability when there are when there are network communication problems with the external database.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved paper size detection for Epson printers for Mac.
- Improved page level color detection for PCL5 based printers.
- Improved page count detection for PCL6 based printers.
- Added support for the Konica-Minolta Bizhub 163 and other Konica Minolta GDI printers.
- Fixed page-level color detection problem for FX DocuPrint C3290 FS Postscript driver.
27 August 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.4 (Build 6339)
Fixes:
- Fixed problem Boscop Virtual Cash Acceptor devices.
- Fixed error that could sometimes occur when creating new Boscop devices.
- Improvements to application logging to assist diagnosing problems.
12 August 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.4 (Build 6267)
New features:
- Native support for iPrint queues on Novell OES Linux.
- New "Internal Users" feature. This feature allows managing a set of users in addition to those in the configured user directory. It can be used for managing guest users (who may not have a domain account), or in organizations without a directory server.
- New client authentication feature allowing authentication to be remembered forever.
- Allow very large account lists to be efficiently distributed to remote sites with slow network connections. See the developer blog for more information.
- New shared account invoice report to display the detailed print logs allocated to each account.
- Allow display of a custom currency sign/symbol. This is useful in organizations using a currency different to their standard national currency.
- Add support for the UK's Barclaycard ePDQ CPI card payment service in the payment gateway module.
Enhancements:
- A variety of enhancements to the "Bulk Account Operations" feature:
- Allow changes to be applied to a subset of accounts based on the account name.
- Allow modifying the account security settings for multiple accounts at once.
- Allow accounts to be deleted in bulk.
- Large performance improvements viewing print logs and running print reports for sites using the default/internal database. The database settings are now better optimized for database queries that run over large datasets.
- Reduce the amount of client account data downloaded by the client by 25 to 30 times. This could dramatically speed up the loading of accounts over slow network connections.
- Improved support for Mac OS X when users have multiple "short names".
- Improved performance and reduced server resource usage when the users client downloads large account lists.
- Improved performance when modifying shared account security settings on many (10's of thousands) accounts at once.
- Improved performance of retrieving members of a group from LDAP. This also reduces the number of concurrent connections to the LDAP server.
- Added a new print charging model to charge by "Paper length". This can be used as an alternative to paper area charging for large format plotters.
- Allowed the 'initial creation rules' to be re-applied to either a single user or a group of users. This can be done through the user interface and server-command tool.
- Improved the display and layout of the Shared Accounts list displayed in the end-user web pages.
- Mac/Linux: Automatically populate LDAP settings during installation.
- Added a username filter to the account transactions page, making it easier to find transactions for a given user.
- Improved support for complex domain hierarchies by following "referrals" sent by Active Directory.
- Improved documentation for creating and installing SSL certificates.
- Added new server-command and web services API to list all shared accounts and the shared accounts available to a given user.
- Improved the client launcher "pc-client-local-cache.exe" to more aggressively retry starting the client when problems occur.
- Improved setup/install documentation by adding a separate section for each platform.
- Linux: Add an uninstall script to automate the uninstallation process.
- Updated translations for Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Spanish, Italian and Czech.
Fixes:
- Fixed a problem that could stop printing notification messages to be delivered to user clients under some circumstances.
- Fixed a rare problem that could stop a job from appearing in the release station. This problem could only occur when the release station timeout was set to a very long period.
- Improved reliability of the print popup notifications when the user does not exist in PaperCut and needs to identify themselves using the client tool's identity dialog.
- Improved security of the client identity dialog which is displayed when the logged in user does not exist in PaperCut.
- Fixed an error that could occur on the printer charts and statistics page.
- Improved support for processing very large spool files (greater than 1.5 GB) on Windows.
- Improved reliability of page-level color detection of very large images in PCL print jobs.
- Improved reliability and error reporting during scheduled quota allocations.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved page counting for duplex documents for a variety of PCL and Postscript printers.
- Improved copy count detection for the Seiko Teriostar LP-1010L.
- Improved page size detection for custom paper size with PCL 5 printer drivers.
- Fixed page count problem with Xerox booklet printing setting used on the APEOS PORT II - C7500.
- Linux/Mac: Added paper size detection support for the CUPS raster spool file format.
- Add support for the FXPLW language used by the FujiXerox DocuCentre Color 400 CP and other FujiXerox printers.
- Improved page count and page size detection for printing for HPGL plotters.
Copier / device integration:
- Add support for Sharp OSA embedded.
- Add support for Ricoh ESA embedded.
- Add support for Boscop VCC Alpha/touchscreen terminal.
- Add support for using the Boscop Virtual Cash Accepter to add credit to multiple PaperCut instances.
- Updated CopiCode-IP firmware to version 1.2.0.
26 May 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.3 (Build 5959)
New features:
- New set of "Environmental Impact" reports summarizing the impact of user printing.
- Users with access to "Shared Account" can now view balances under their end-user web login.
- Administrators can set a custom message that displays on login screen.
- Native support for IPv6 networks (Yes! We have some University customers that have made the move.).
- New report options allow reports to be run over ranges defined down to the second.
- Added search to the online help documentation.
Performance and Scalability:
This release includes significant performance and scalability improvements, particularly for sites with a large number of users:- Significantly reduced the memory required to import a large number of users. It is now possible to import hundreds of thousands of users on a machine with limited memory.
- Optimized adding new users on demand (i.e. when a user first prints). PaperCut would previously use too much memory and CPU resources when adding a new user on systems with thousands of users.
- Reworked the database locking code resulting in improved performance under very high load.
- Large speed improvements and reduced CPU usage (up to 1000% on large networks) when retrieving large number of users from Active Directory.
- Improved speed of admin login and display of the user list screen.
- New SQL Server driver configuration that removes Unicode overhead and allows more effective use of indexes.
- Large speed improvements when performing initial user import on a SQL Server database. The import process was modified to allow SQL Server to dynamically create index statistics, resulting in improved import speed.
- Optimized "Bulk User Actions" when adjusting/setting user balances which improves performance by 30%.
- Optimized the "batch-import-user-card-id-numbers" server-command to improve performance when updating large batches of users.
- Reduce the thread priority of report generation. This ensures that running large reports do not impact on other parts of the system.
Enhancements:
- Improved reliability of print popup notifications and message delivery to the user client on systems with multiple network interfaces and IP addresses (multi-homed systems).
- New paper size filter option added to the print logs screen.
- Option to copy printer color detection settings between printers.
- Added a new "noquit" command-line and config file option that prevents users closing/quitting the client.
- Improved audit logging records actions such as when:
- TopUp/Prepaid card batches are deleted or expired.
- Configuration settings are changed using the "Config Editor".
- Added more filters to the user list screen and reports (e.g. min/max balance, restriction, office, department and notes).
- Added short-cut keys to the software Release Station which provides improved accessibility to vision impaired users.
- Intelligently shorten the printer names in the printer usage charts so that long printer names are not truncated.
- Added improved support creating TopUp/Prepaid card with Office 2007.
- Increase the bulk user import file size limit to 100MB, to allow for large imports.
- Added an option to always use the "Global email suffix", even when the user record already has an email address defined.
- Net Control: Improved algorithm for checking if a sites is in the ignored domains list. Some customers populated the ignored domains list with 50,000+ hosts and this caused the Internet Control service to run at 100% CPU. The new algorithm can handle this number of hosts with minimal CPU usage.
- Additional information is display in the user client task tray tool tip.
- Upgrade to the latest version of the internal Apache Derby database. This release improves performance on multi-processor systems and provides improved reliability.
- Running "
db-tools init-db -f
" when using the internal database will backup and re-create the database from scratch. - Various documentation improvements including more sections to assist administrators with producing their own handouts to educate users about Topup/Prepaid cards, print refunds and using release stations.
- Updated translations for Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Swedish.
Fixes:
- Improved the display of the user client balance window when the display is configured for "Large Fonts (120 dpi)" on Windows.
- We have seen a number of cases of duplicate users/printers appearing in the databases. We have made a number of changes to avoid this from occurring. If a duplicate users are detected they are handled gracefully and automatically removed.
- Do not hide the user client balance window when the user can select "Shared Accounts" but printing costs are deducted from their personal balance.
- Fixed problem normalizing usernames that come from external systems like Novell print queues.
- Fixed error that could occur drawing the user's balance history graph in some circumstances.
- Mac: Fix auto-restart of the user client on OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
- When the license expires allow administrators to access the "Options" section so they can perform limited administration tasks (e.g. backups, reduce user counts, etc).
- Improved how Topup/Prepaid card numbers are generated to ensure no "bad" words can be produced.
- Improved sorting of groups displayed from an external source (like Active Directory). This makes it easier to find groups when there are thousands in the list.
- When "Print All" is selected in the release station, do not print any jobs unless the user has credit for all jobs.
- Improved compatibility with Opera web browser.
- Linux: Improved reliability of installation of CUPS integration components.
- Net Control: Improved Microsoft ISA log processing for SSL/HTTPS traffic. Previously SSL/HTTPS downloads would be charged even if the site was in the "ignored hosts" list.
- Improve reliability of importing ChargeBack 6.x and earlier account databases.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved color detection for HP Business Inkjet 1200.
- Added Apple Mac support for the EPSON Stylus Pro 4880C (and other drivers using the CUPS raster format).
- Fixed standard mode color detection for the HP Designjet T610.
- Improved support for the Apple Mac Gutenprint drivers.
- Improved page size detection for the Xerox Workcentre M24 Postscript drivers for Mac.
- Improved page count detection for Canon LBP5900 LIPSLX driver.
- Improved page count detection reported with recent Xerox Phaser 7400DN Postscript drivers when printing from Adobe applications.
Copier / device integration:
- Simplify administration by allowing device price line configuration to be copied between devices.
- Fixed a problem with the Boscop Virtual Cash Acceptor that could occur when a user did not add cash to their account.
- Added a cash reconciliation report which can be used when reconciling credit added using "value loaders" and "cash acceptors".
- Update CopiCode-IP firmware to version 1.1.8 which adds support for a coin unit to add credit to user accounts.
- Fixed problem where the Boscop Virtual Cash Controller would stop working if invalid configuration data was given.
3 April 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.2 (Build 5777)
This release fixes some problems found with version 8.2 (Build 5695) and provides improved support for some printers.
Fixes:
- Fix a problem with the user client that would allow the user to close it even through it was required for printing.
- Improved reliability of importing account data from PaperCut ChargeBack 6 (or earlier) when the account names include TAB characters.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved copy count detection for HP LaserJet 4700dn.
- Improved copy count detection for RISO HC5500.
- Improved page size detection size detection for KIP 5000.
6 March 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.2 (Build 5695)
New features:
- Add improved support and completed compatibility testing for Windows Server 2008.
- Implemented intelligent handling of selected printer monitoring error conditions. PaperCut has a fail-open design by default ensuring that printing will continue uninterrupted on events such as an application server or network failure. However this was not ideal for some situations where a fail-closed (deny on failure) may be preferred. The behavior on error can now be configured to suit the site's need. There are now 3 options to choose from:
- On error print all but held jobs - if an error occurs for jobs are held awaiting release from a release queue or client popup they will continue to be held until connection to the application server is re-established. New print jobs will be allowed to print unhindered. (New default behavior).
- On error print - under any error condition allow the job to print (Previous default behavior).
- On error hold - under any error condition hold the job and continue to hold until the connection with the application server is re-established.
This new default behavior greatly improves printer monitoring reliability on sites that make use of print hold/release queues or account selection popups.
- Add a new "server-command" to import/update card/identity numbers and PINs from a file.
- Added on option to mandate that the user must select a "Charge Rate" in the advanced account selection popup. To take advantage of this feature, the clients must be upgraded.
Enhancements:
- Greatly improved scalability for sites running hold/release queues with hundreds of print jobs being held at once.
- In the setup wizard and user/group sync page, allow the group lists to be expanded to show very long group names.
- The installer now automatically adds firewall exceptions for important PaperCut in-bound ports. This streamlines out-of-the-box setup on firewall enabled Windows systems.
- Provide a "Select all" option on the "Copy settings from printer to printer" screen. This greatly improved usability when copying settings to hundreds of printers.
- Display a warning when setting a user to "unauthenticated" to indicate that the client software is required.
- Do not monitor Citrix printers re-mapped from the client session.
- Mac: Display the printer's friendly name when enabling/disabling printers using the Control Printer Monitoring script.
- When a printer is re-enabled, record the change in the application log.
- Various documentation improvements including a new section to assist administrators with producing their own handouts to educate users about various aspects of print monitoring/control.
- Display a browser "favicon" when accessing the application in a web browser.
- When running the standard release station in "Release Any" mode, do not prompt the user for confirmation if the print job is zero cost.
- Updated translations for Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Swedish.
Fixes:
- When retrieving users and group information from Active Directory can be a resource intensive process. This now runs as a low priority task to ensure it does not adversely affect other applications.
- Fixed a race-condition that may have prevented the printer error monitoring feature from working on some systems.
- Fixed problem with client authentication popup when the username contained uppercase characters.
- Clarified some wording on the "Shared Account Invoice Report".
- Ensure that card/identity numbers are unique when updated using the "server-command" or web service APIs.
- Fixed a problem that stopped the "add-new-shared-account" server-command from working correctly.
- Fixed a problem with multi-domain support for Active Directory if spaces appeared between the configured domains.
- When disabling multi-domain support for Active Directory also disable the use of multi-domains for authentication.
- Fixed most frequent crash errors as reported via the "report error" screen.
- Allow more flexible use of the regular expressions to normalize usernames.
- Sort the "printer usage summary by user" report by username when using the PostgreSQL database.
- Net Control: When users were enabled/disabled using the "Bulk User Actions" screen, their "Internet Group" membership was not updated.
Security:
- Fixed a CSRF security vulnerability in the end-user web pages. This issue is considered a low risk and only affects customers with the end-user transfer feature enabled. Thanks to James from Personal Service Society Incorporated for bringing this to our attention.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Add support for the HP LaserJet P1505n (and other P1500 series printers)
- Improve duplex detection for the Xerox Phaser 7300.
- Improved duplex, page size, copy count and page-level color detection for some PCL5 printer drivers.
- Improved duplex detection for the OKI C7300.
- Improved page count detection for the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1050.
- Fixed page count detection when printing to a HP LaserJet 4700dn from an Apple Mac.
Copier / device integration:
- Fixed a problem setting card PIN from VCC/CopiCode devices when the card number is in format "[idno]=[checksum]".
- Add a small delay between commands sent to VCC/VCA devices which seems to improve the reliability of the devices.
- Allow the use of alpha-numeric characters when logging into the VCC/VCA devices.
- Fixed an error that can occur rarely when deleting/stopping VCC/VCA devices.
- Fixed a problem where VCC devices showed a status of "Inactive" when they were still working correctly.
- Updated CopiCode-IP firmware to version 1.1.5.
- When a device is used as a release station, ensure that at least one printer queue is selected.
- Improved behavior when deleting devices or disabling device integration to ensure we don't lock the user interface.
11 January 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.1 (Build 5490)
Fixed a problem where print jobs could time-out early when both the client popup authentication and release/hold queues are in use. This would occur if the user is using the authentication popup and does not release the job from the release station within 10 minutes.
10 January 2008 - PaperCut MF 8.1 (Build 5488)
New features:
- In the software release station, allow the administrator to enable both username/password and card authentication simultaneously.
- Internet Control: Added an option to allow the Internet security group to be populated with users without Internet access. This allows the administrator to invert the previously default behavior (i.e. to include denied users instead of allowed users). Depending on the existing proxy server rules, it is may be more convenient to use a "Deny" rule rather than an "Allow" rule.
Enhancements:
- Provide better user feedback when users release/cancel jobs from the software release station. The screen will automatically be updated to show that the job has started printing (or been cancelled).
- Improved the reliability of delivering printing notifications to the PaperCut user client, when the machine name associated with the print job does not match the machine name reported by the user client.
- Improved handling of jobs that are manually removed from the print queues (e.g. cancelled/deleted by an administrator). These jobs will then be automatically removed from the PaperCut hold/release queues.
- On Mac and Linux, when PaperCut is installed, add the PaperCut binary directory to the PATH to simplify running the command line tools.
- On Mac, improved print account popup speed for Epson printers.
- Clarified error messages output by the database restore process.
- Improved interaction with LDAP servers to reduce the number of LDAP connections used when performing a user/group sync.
- Included the PaperCut version number on the page that is displayed when an error occurs.
- Improve the reliability of the installer when the server name and/or IP address cannot be determined.
- Updated translations for Swedish, French, Spanish and Chinese.
Fixes:
- Fixed a problem where print jobs could time-out early when both the client popup and release/hold queues are in use. This would occur if the user is using the popup and does not release the job from the release station within 10 minutes.
- Fixed the real-time notification of balance updates to the user client when using client popup authentication when logged with a user with uppercase characters in their username.
- Fixed a problem when synchronizing the group members from AD/LDAP prior to a quota allocation. This could stop future sync operations from running.
- Fixed an error that occurred when running the "Group internet usage - summary (ad-hoc)" report if no "From Date" is specified.
- Suppressed a harmless error message that would appear in the server log file when a notification message could not be delivered to a client.
- Fixed a spelling error in the TopUp/Prepaid card wizard.
- Various documentation improvements.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Added basic support for the HP PSC 1300 series (and similar printers).
- Improved page count detection for duplex print jobs on PCL6-based printers.
- Fixed the copy count detection for the OKI C8800 Postscript driver.
- Improved paper size detection for the OKI C8800 PCL driver.
- Improved page count detection for the Canon C3200 Mac driver.
- Improved duplex detection for the Kyocera FS-C5025N on Mac.
13 December 2007 - PaperCut MF 8.0 (Build 5433)
Fixed a problem seen on some Windows XP desktops where the client software would report an annoying "End Now?" dialog on logout or system shutdown. The problem was caused by a 3rd party component.
12 December 2007 - PaperCut MF 8.0 (Build 5428)
Special Notes:
This is a major release. Please check the Upgrade Policy for upgrade eligibility. This release also contains a database upgrade and administrators should factor this into their upgrade plan.
New features:
- Added group-based printer restrictions allowing administrators to restrict the use of a printer to a group or set of groups. This is particularly useful on Mac servers, as OS X server does not have in-built group-based access controls.
- Added a new account selection mode to automatically charge a user's print jobs to a single shared account. This is useful when a user works in a single department or project, as it automates account selection and removes the need to display the popup and run the client software.
- Admin rights may now be assigned at the group level in addition to individual users. This offers more convenient management on sites with a large number of administrators.
- Full support for Apple Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) on both the server and the client.
- PaperCut now supports Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) offering an alternate clustering option in addition to Microsoft Clustering services.
- Added new admin access controls (ACLs) to limit management tasks such as Pre-Paid card management and refunding of print jobs.
- A new set of transaction based reports providing detailed listing and summary of transaction types and amounts.
- Enhanced user account synchronization allowing users' card/identity numbers to be automatically imported/updated from fields in Active Directory or LDAP.
- The Internet Control module now supports Squid proxy server running directly on Max OSX.
- Mac and Linux base systems can now be configured to run as a "secondary Internet Control server".
- Improve the format of various CSV reports to make them easier to use.
- Much improved documentation covering Apple Mac setup including deployment on Leopard and using the Workgroup Manager to publish printers.
- ... and many more features and improvements since the release of version 7.
Enhancements:
- Changed terminology from "print release station" to "hold/release queue" to better reflect that this feature can also be used via a web browser rather than just dedicated release stations.
- Added total/summary rows to the bottom of all of reports.
- Add a new option to allow the popup authentication to remember the authentication for "this job only".
- Add more filters to the transaction log pages providing more flexibility searching of the transaction logs.
- Improved the performance of the internal database, by automatically optimizing database tables.
- Added a new configuration option to ignore standard system users such as all users ending in "$". These accounts usually represent machine accounts. The setting also accepts user-defined regular expressions, providing the power to ignore site specific accounts such as system mailboxes.
- Improved default notification messages delivered to users when their printing is denied.
- Updated system runtime libraries to improve performance and stability.
- Add a web-service API and server-command operation to query the status of a previously started task (e.g. a user sync or backup running in the background).
- Add a web-service API and server-command to retrieve the print job and page counts.
- Added example shell scripts that make use of the "server-command" functionality.
- Improved support for non-compliant LDAP servers (e.g. OpenLDAP 2.2.13).
- Improved support for Arabic languages in PDF reports.
- Updated translations for Dutch, Czech, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Portuguese.
- Improved support for various external devices.
- Add an end-user page to allow users to change their own card/identity number PIN.
- Allow the card PIN to be retrieved/set through the web-service and server-command API.
- Allow the card PIN to be updated/imported using the bulk user import/update.
Fixes:
- Fixed a potential crash bug in the Windows print provider service that may occur with selected printer drivers when the error reporting feature is enabled.
- Fixed a potential crash bug that may have occurred if a misbehaving driver returns invalid data.
- Fixed account selection popup problems that may occur if Terminal Server and popup authentication was used together on the same network.
- Fix a problem where hold/release queue settings were lost when switching between printer tabs.
- Improved reliability when processing badly formatted user or account import files.
- Fix a problem where the account selection popup could display repeatedly on the same desktop.
- Improved error messages when problems are encountered when restoring a database (e.g. running "db-tools import-db").
- Addressed server load issues that may occur when many print jobs (100+) are bulk cancelled from a blocked queue.
- Fixed a problem where Internet control settings changed by one admin user were immediately visible by other admins.
- Fixed problem that stopped page-level color detection and printer error reporting from working on printers that contain non-ASCII characters (e.g. Chinese characters) in their name.
- Fixed icon display issue when the Mac client was installed using the client-local-install program.
- Fixed issue seen on very large systems where default SQL Server timeouts where halting the upgrade process.
- Fixed problems in the Spanish translation that was causing some unexpected errors.
- Various documentation improvements.
Printer compatibility improvements:
- Improved page counting and copy count detection for QPDL printers (e.g. Samsung ML-2010, Samsung CLP-510).
- Improved duplex detection for selected PCL6 based printers (in particular the IBM Infoprinter 1357).
- Improved duplex detection on recent driver updates for the Kyocera FS9520DN.
- Improved page count and copy count detection with Canon CAPT based drivers (e.g. Canon iR1200/1300).
- Added grayscale detection for the OKI 5600 printer.
- Smarter page-level color detection methods used with selected Postscript drivers.
- Improved page-level color detection when printing and rendering images directly from Photoshop.
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