Creating a package to map print queues manually

[johnlee]

Hi All

We have recently rolled out about 50 brand new Ricoh printers.
I was wondering if a Casper package can be configured to map various print queues (LPD) for Mac users, so that only users who wants the print queue specific for their areas simply need to run the package to have the print queue mapped on their machine.

This is because not all users wants print queue installed on their machines.

An alternative would be to create a Policy on Casper to roll out the print queues by manually adding the machine name to the policy, but just wondering if user could have an option to just add the printers themselves without having to go through the entire Add Printer process.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[blackholemac]

This could be an easy one...but it would add 50 new packages in addition to the Ricoh Drivers package.

So the command to add a printer to a Mac via command line is:

lpadmin -p Printer_Name -D "Printer Name" -L "Office" -E -v lpd://X.X.X.X/ -P /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/RICOH Aficio MP C3501

Now, if you want a printer install package for each printer, create a payload free package and add the command as a postinstall script. Obviously your driver may vary. Finally, you might want to check out the "man lpadmin" page ahead of time to customize to your environment. I would recommend installing the drivers ahead of time in the process.

Now, the downside to that approach is that you would have 50 installer packages.

Now for a better way to do this assuming you have added all your printer queues to Casper Admin...what I would do is write a Self Service policy that lets users decide if they want a given print queue or not. Within the same policy, you could embed the driver. That is probably the easiest way to do it. Perhaps what I might also do is publish the printers by group...Say add all the art department printers to one policy, all the science department printers to one policy, all the math department printers to one policy, etc. If not adding 50 policies to Casper is much easier with the clone functions.

Hope this gives some food for thought.

[mpermann]

@johnlee, if you've already installed the printer drivers on all your computers with Casper, you can create a policy for each printer that can be accessed from Self Service using the lpadmin command that @blackholemac referenced above. I'm currently doing this for our printing devices. I've deployed the printer driver to all our computers so the policy is simply scoped to all computers and in the Files and Processes section under Execute Command, I place the lpadmin command for the specific printer and name the policy and set the Self Service options appropriately. I had been using Casper Admin to capture the printers but I like the lpadmin command much better. You can control the printer defaults more easily and once you understand all the different parts of the command it's very simple to use. Also, if all of the Ricoh printers are the same model with the same options, then the lpadmin command is nearly the same for all printers. All you have to change in the command is the printer name and address.