On Mar 28, 2007, at 11:52 AM, Dan Stranathan wrote:
I am migrating my OS X Print server (and my 50 network printers)
from AppleTalk to Bonjour and IPP. I plan on using IPP from the
front-end protocol (from the client to the print server) and TCP/
LPR for most of the back-end protocols (from the server to the
actual printer)
2 disappointing observations:
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?)
I have had luck with putting my printers in OD. <http://
docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.4/en/
c1ps5.html> This is assuming all of your clients are part of an OD
domain.
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.
This is still an issue. To resolve the issue of stopped print queues
you can setup a cron (launchd) job to periodically check the printer
status and start a stopped print queue. This leaves it to the user
to determine that their print job didn't come out and look at the
printer though. It would be nice to see the status passed back to
the users but I haven't figured that one out yet.
Any ideas on how to solve these 2 issues?
I MUST replace AppleTalk with something else. My Cisco network gear
is slowly but surely dropping support for AppleTalk, and Id like to
get away from AppleTalk for other obvious reasons anyway.
Am I barking up the wrong tree thinking that I should replace
AppleTalk with Bonjour and IPP on my print server?
BTW: MY print server is an Xserve running 10.4.8 server and has 4
GB RAM. I have about 200 Mac clients on my LAN (all 10.4.8). They
print to 10 primary tier 1 printers (Xerox and HP) and 30 less
important tier 2 printers (mostly HPs of all vintages and sizes).
My server will have less than 50 queues total.
