Hi,
I posted a question about printer setups/queues a few weeks ago, but had no responses. Since then I have done a bunch of testing and clarified for myself what was occuring, so i thought i would post again and see if anyone has any insight into my problem.
Basically, I have created print queues for each of my 40+ printers on my xserve (10.4.7). Each time you create a queue in server admin, the server also adds a respective entry in printer setup utility. You are given several options on how to share out each printer (IPP, SMB, LPR, etc). On a client machine, if you go and manually add this printer via 'shared printers' or by typing a queue name in the case of LPR, everything works perfectly: The client sends a print job to the queue and the server queues/spools the job to the printer. This would be fine, but in a school enviorment, it is really of benefit to me to be managing the printers that various students have access to by way of the workgroup manager. Opening up workgroup manager, I can select a user, user group, or machine group to assign a certain printer to, and then pull up the 'printer list' to select what printer to assign. This will bring up the list of queues i have defined (and not the list from printer setup utility... These are almost identical but not quite). When I add a printer in this manner, everything seems to work fine on the surface, but the problem is that the printer itself, and not the print queue, is being assigned to the client. This means that instead of a print job going through the server it is going directly from client to printer. To clarify why this is an issue, in a lab of 25 machines, if all the students print at once they are all spooling directly from their client machines to the printer, bypassing the server entirely. It also removes the ability to centrally monitor printer status etc, as the queues are being bypassed. In the literature for tiger server, it clearly states that workgroup manager can be used to assign printers AND queues, although so far i have had no sign of it being able to assign anything other than printers. The only way around this that i have been able to come up with, which is a TERRIBLE solution, is to have 2 print servers. I can set up all the printers on a second server and share them via LPR. Then I can create new queues on the primary server with workgroup manager and add the printers a second time, but instead of adding the printer itself, i add the LPR queue address from the second server. That way, the only printer information on the primary server is the queue address, and sharing works properly. Success, but now everything has to be added twice, and the whole print services setup on the primary server does absolutely NOTHING, other than to point the workgroup manager to the queues on the secondary server.
There has to be a way to get the workgroup manager to share the queues instead of the printers. I would greatly appreciate any advice or direction on this
Thanks!!
Neil
I posted a question about printer setups/queues a few weeks ago, but had no responses. Since then I have done a bunch of testing and clarified for myself what was occuring, so i thought i would post again and see if anyone has any insight into my problem.
Basically, I have created print queues for each of my 40+ printers on my xserve (10.4.7). Each time you create a queue in server admin, the server also adds a respective entry in printer setup utility. You are given several options on how to share out each printer (IPP, SMB, LPR, etc). On a client machine, if you go and manually add this printer via 'shared printers' or by typing a queue name in the case of LPR, everything works perfectly: The client sends a print job to the queue and the server queues/spools the job to the printer. This would be fine, but in a school enviorment, it is really of benefit to me to be managing the printers that various students have access to by way of the workgroup manager. Opening up workgroup manager, I can select a user, user group, or machine group to assign a certain printer to, and then pull up the 'printer list' to select what printer to assign. This will bring up the list of queues i have defined (and not the list from printer setup utility... These are almost identical but not quite). When I add a printer in this manner, everything seems to work fine on the surface, but the problem is that the printer itself, and not the print queue, is being assigned to the client. This means that instead of a print job going through the server it is going directly from client to printer. To clarify why this is an issue, in a lab of 25 machines, if all the students print at once they are all spooling directly from their client machines to the printer, bypassing the server entirely. It also removes the ability to centrally monitor printer status etc, as the queues are being bypassed. In the literature for tiger server, it clearly states that workgroup manager can be used to assign printers AND queues, although so far i have had no sign of it being able to assign anything other than printers. The only way around this that i have been able to come up with, which is a TERRIBLE solution, is to have 2 print servers. I can set up all the printers on a second server and share them via LPR. Then I can create new queues on the primary server with workgroup manager and add the printers a second time, but instead of adding the printer itself, i add the LPR queue address from the second server. That way, the only printer information on the primary server is the queue address, and sharing works properly. Success, but now everything has to be added twice, and the whole print services setup on the primary server does absolutely NOTHING, other than to point the workgroup manager to the queues on the secondary server.
There has to be a way to get the workgroup manager to share the queues instead of the printers. I would greatly appreciate any advice or direction on this
Thanks!!
Neil