Bonjour printing and Leopard

John Varela

Registered
I have a printer attached to this iMac and my wife has been printing to it from her iMac G5 over the Airport network.

After upgrading both machines to Leopard she can no longer print.

When printing in Tiger, the networked printer appeared in her dropdown window and all she had to do was tell it to go. That window now says "No printer Selected". Clicking on Add Printer brings up another window and lo and behold the network printer is listed right there identified as a Bonjour connection, but the windows at the bottom say "No Selection".

Click on the printer name and the little whirligig spins for a while and then up comes correct data for the printer: printer maker and model, at my computer's name, and print using the correct driver. Fine, click on "ADD".

Up pops an error pane that says "An error occurred while trying to add the selected printer" and "client-error-not-authorized".

It appears that authorization is needed. From where? On my machine or her machine? How do I bring up the authorization window?

A possible related problem is this: I have an AppleScript that I got from MacWorld mag; this script stops printing. The entire script is this:

do shell script "cancel -a -"
display dialog "No more printing jobs." buttons ["OK"] default button 1

When I invoke this script an error pane comes up that says "Password for John on localhost?" and "cancel purge-jobs failed: Unauthorized".

Again with the unauthorized and no hint as to how to gain authorization.

Can anyone tell me how to fix this?
 
Turn on Printer Sharing in the System Preferences->Sharing. Plus look in the System Preferences->Security see if the Firewall is allowing connection through it.

Plus Apple just released a Software Update (December 17th, 2007) that updates the printing protocols in Leopard.
 
Thanks for the response.

Turn on Printer Sharing in the System Preferences->Sharing. Plus look in the System Preferences->Security see if the Firewall is allowing connection through it.

Printer sharing is on, as it has been since Tiger. Ditto for the Firewall. In any case, that wouldn't have anything to do with the behavior of the AppleScript.

Plus Apple just released a Software Update (December 17th, 2007) that updates the printing protocols in Leopard.

I found two updates, to Quicktime and Security. Downloaded and installed, they make no difference to the AppleScript. I'll keep checking to see if a printer update shows up.
 
You keep mentioning this "AppleScript", which has me confused.
Are you trying to get printing to Start, or Stop?
I would think you should work at getting printing to work before concerning yourself with a script to stop printing.

jb
 
You keep mentioning this "AppleScript", which has me confused.
Are you trying to get printing to Start, or Stop?
I would think you should work at getting printing to work before concerning yourself with a script to stop printing.

jb

Printing works from this computer to the printer that is connected to one of its USB ports. It does not work from the other computer via Bonjour, because something, presumably on this computer, demands authentication. An AppleScript on this computer that relates to printing similarly demands authentication.

These demands for authentication were not seen under Tiger. They appeared with Leopard. It seems likely that these two demands for authentication are symptoms of a single phenomenon.

Assuming that is so, then in order to test the phenomenon it is easier to invoke the AppleScript while sitting at this computer than to go to the other end of the house and try to print something from the other computer.

Does that clarify it?
 
I have encountered a similar problem as John V above.

I had three imacs on an Airport Extreme network sharing a printer USB'd to my G4 imac on my desk. I upgraded to 10.5 on the two G4's and got a new Intel iMac for me (with 10.5) (of course).

The network configuration is the same, but the two G4s can't print. They initially came up with "no printer selected", (then i turned on Printer Sharing on my IntelMac).

The Printer Utility now "sees" the Intel-iMac-linked printer via bonjour -- but tries to find a "new driver" and always comes up with a "generic postscript printer" driver.... and then it never connects to the printer.

I did a complete Mac OS X upgrade on each of the macs -- all have 10.5.1 and I loaded specifically all Epson print drivers.

The Intel-iMac shows the driver as "Epson Stylus CX5400 (1)" -- I don't know how it found it 'cause it didn't ask me for any help in selecting the driver and it works swell.

The remote G4's see the right printer, but never find the same driver as shown above. My iBook G4 can print if directly connected to the printer (and the driver it chooses is the same as my Intel-iMac).

Firewall on the Intel-iMac is open to all connections. Filesharing an Printersharing are on. I can do screen sharing with both G4s and Airport is running better now than before.

Ideas?

Thanks
 
Greetings to all who might be scratching their heads now --
Right after posting the above question -- I reconsidered my situation. I had actually changed the firewall from the limited access mode, to full access based on comments by 'satcomer' above. This didn't seem to have any immediate affect, so I posted the question.

Right after posting, I thought I'd try to see if things were different. They are. Something in the firewall setting must have changed how the remote G4s accessed the printer server (Intel-iMac) because they both found the right Epson driver, and have successfully printed via the Airport-Intel-iMac connection.

Hope this helps someone else.

Cheers.
 
I have encountered a similar problem as John V above.

I was remiss in not posting the solution to my problem.

I couldn't print via Bonjour and couldn't add the printer because I was told I needed authentication.

The solution was given me by one of the techs here: add the printer from an Administrator account. (I of course normally run from a standard account.)
 
I too spent quite a while trying to connect to my wireless printer after installing Leopard to no avail. I found it interesting that my Epson C120 was referred to as my "bonjour" printer even though it only worked when connected with an USB cable. However, I simply got lucky by adding another printer (the same Epson C 120... bonjour), BUT I changed the name to "Bonjour Epson C 120"... bonjour AND IT NOW WORKS WIRELESSLY! Go figure!

Why couldn't Apple have made it as simple as in 10.4?
 
Hi All,

I have a wireless network that runs via Airport Extreme and my G3 iMac running 10.3.9. My printer is an Epson Stylus Photo RX595. My G4 powerbook running 10.4.x was able to connect and print via this network easily and seamlessly. My printer is connected to the Airport.

I now have 10.5.2 installed on my powerbook. While the printer is recognized by the computer, nothing happens. It says it's printing, the 'print job' finishes, disappears from the queue, and nothing comes out.

I can print from the powerbook via a direct connect. I have tried all of the things suggested so far and nothing has worked. At this point I am ready to rip my hair out. Please help!

Thank you.
 
To solve this problem (wireless/bonjour printing via AirPort Express no longer works properly after upgrading to Leopard), I did two things:

1) I downloaded a Leopard-specific driver from Epson (I have an Epson CX5000)
AND
2) as per a suggestion in this forum thread, renamed the printer to have the word "Bonjour" as the first word in the printer name (making my printer name "Bonjour Epson Stylus CX5000").

Only when both of these things were done did wireless/bonjour printing start working again.

(I hope a Leopard update will fix this absolutely frustrating and absurd problem. Don't you know? Printing on a Mac is supposed to just work!)
 
For non-PostScript printers, this is not and never has been true.

Yes. You take me too literally sir. But a printer operation should just work when the proper driver is installed. To have to rename a printer to enable functionality is a ridiculous and obtuse hack. To have to guess at this solution is even worse.
 
This did it.

The answer is in CUPS. If your printer says at any point "access forbidden" then CUPS is shutting you out. Check out the link to cups as posted above (http://127.0.0.1:631) and look at the server. There is a text file which pops up that you can simply click and change text. BE CAREFUL. You are modifying the information regarding the print server for OS X.

But simply changing deny to allow will fix those printing problems.

I just wish that enabling printer sharing would automatically change the CUPS settings...

Props to the poster above who figured this out!
 
I've just upgraded from Panther to Leopard and was getting the same error. Using the previous post's suggestion of editing the server config file in CUPS I noticed that it was considerably different to the file in a clean install of Leopard. There is a button in the window to use the default file which I clicked and I now don't have the problem.

My suggestion is that upgrading an OS has kept the existing configuration file which doesn't work in the newer version of CUPS. Resetting this file to the default file for that release appears to have fixed the issue.
 
This is a strange thread. I started it three years ago... and reported I had solved my Bonjour printing problem in Leopard by reinstalling the printer driver from an administrator account.

Later, one of the upgrades to Leopard (10.5.7?) destroyed Bonjour almost completely. Either iMac could access the other using the IP address, but computer names didn't work. Printing didn't work no matter what. In this case, the sending iMac acted as if it was successful, but the receiving iMac never saw the message.

From time to time I messed around with various things and nothing corrected the problem until the receiving iMac was upgraded to Snow Leopard. No changes were made to the sending iMac (a G5 still on 10.5.8) but suddenly all Bonjour functions work in both directions.

Go figure.
 
Hi John,

I found this thread by searching for "client-error-not-authorized", I was getting this when adding a printer in a non-admin account although I had unlocked it using the admin log-in.

I could add a printer in the admin account but this was the only machine that I needed to do that with, the last post that mentioned editing the cupsd.conf file solved it for me. I clicked the Use Default Configuration file button, restarted the Mac and it was fixed.

The original cupsd.conf file was much larger than one from a clean install of Leopard and I guess it was left over from the previous Panther installation.

The upgrade lost the previously installed printers so I'll make reverting to the default file part of any upgrade I do from now on.

Regards Alan
 
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