On Mar 28, 2007, at 11:52 AM, Dan Stranathan wrote:
1) When setting up a printer with the Print Center on a desktop
client, sometimes OS X wont automatically recommend a PPD from a
print queue hosted on the print server. Print Center/CUPS chooses
"Generic" (I assume the server and client are not talking to each
other about printer-specific features like AppleTalk did? Or
perhaps the server isn't communicating with the printer about these
settings?)
It's been a while since I tried centralized server printing, but IIRC
the server did send the correct PPD options to the clients (assuming
they were correct on the server, of course). Is this via IPP or
LPR? LPR may be too old to correctly send this info; IPP may be
required for those options to come through correctly.
2) When printing from a desktop client and there is a printer-
specific problem (example: tray 2 is open, printer is out of paper,
etc), the Print server will not communicate the problem to the
user, instead, the job will never complete. No friendly "out of
paper" errors, etc. The job stalls or just runs for ever on the
client with no indicator of a problem.
Yup. That was one of our main issues. Additionally, if a problem
lingered long enough, the queue would stop on the server, and an
admin would have to restart it. Users who were familiar with simply
fixing the problem (adding paper, clearing a jam), and then having
everything work again were disgruntled with the issues that the
server caused.
Also, large jobs encountered a long delay, as they were processed
once by the server, then re-spooled to the printers. Some of our
higher-volume users didn't like the added delay in printing (which
was quite large for jobs over a hundred pages or so).
I have a writeup of my "personal notes" from our printing saga
online; the beginning of the document talks about what we've tried
(and why), and how we got to where we are:
We realized that the only thing we wanted a server for was accounting
purposes and access control, and those features were not a "must
have" when compared with a stable, reliable printing system. In the
end, we junked the print server and moved to an entirely Bonjour-
based (aka DNS-SD) system. We publish DNS SD records about each
printer, and the clients can easily browse for a printer using the
regular print center dialogs. The machines pick out the right PPD
automatically from the DNS info, and the users receive status
messages directly from the printers.
The only drawbacks are that we don't have central administration of
the printer queues, but in our environment this has been a non-issue
(people generally behave themselves with regards to submitting jobs).
So, figure out why/if you want a print server, and then decide on the
technology that's best. If you don't really need a server, but just
want auto-discovery, DNS-SD has worked well for us. As a side bonus,
if you use static DNS-SD (as we do), the printers don't even have to
support Bonjour directly; so long as they talk TCP/IP, everything
still works as well as it did with AppleTalk (we have some 8-year-old
GCC printers that work fine with the new system).
Hope that helps! If you have other questions, feel free to ask.
