Archive
JNUC 2018 – Slides And Scripts
The slides, scripts, images, and video from my presentation “10 Things Not To Do in a Large Scale Deployment” are available on GitHub now:
Using lpoptions To Identify Printer Options
In my previous post on adding printers via script I mentioned using lpoptions to identify the different option settings for a printer. Let’s open up Terminal and get started with identifying the options. You’ll need to have the printer already installed on the system, so if it isn’t installed go follow my previous post and get it installed.
First, let’s find the name of the printer. For that we will use lpstat -a:
Now that we know the name, Wayne_HOLD, let’s figure out what the options are that we can set. For that we’ll use lpoptions -p Wayne_HOLD -l. Now this list is way too much information to post here, so I’ll just cut it off at a few lines:
Wow, and there’s plenty more information beyond this. This part of setting the options can be a bit trial and error. We probably aren’t going to want to set everything, but we will want to add any options like the “Fiery Graphic Arts Package” that is installed, or the “Output option”, or perhaps the “Xerox high capacity feeder”.
One way we can figure out what option we need to set is by using grep along with the lpoptions command. For example, to know which option sets the “Fiery Graphic Arts Package” we might try this:
lpoptions -p Wayne_HOLD -l | grep -i "graphic arts"
This gives us the following:
That’s great, but what does “GA2” and “GA1” mean? Open up the Options & Supplies window for the printer by going to System Preferences -> Printers & Scanners -> click on the printer and then click on the Options & Supplies button. For this printer, we can see that “GA1” is the “Fiery Graphics Arts Package”.
What happens when we change that in the GUI to:
This is what we see from Terminal:
So now we know that the “GA2” option is the “Fiery Graphics Arts Package, Premium Edition”.
For other settings we need to do some investigation in the Print pane when printing a document. For most printers we’ll want to see what the default view is in the Print dialog window and then make the change in the Terminal using lpoptions and finally go back to the Print dialog window to see what that change did.
In our case we want to set the Output option and the High Capacity Feeder option from their default settings:
To use a high capacity paper source, and to put the output in a different tray:
Notice that in the second screen shot we now have Tray 6 available to us. We can acheive this using the lpadmin command to set the settings (note: the lpoptions command works most of the time, but I have far more success using lpadmin).
By figuring out which settings we want to use, we can now configure all of the options for a printer from a script. One more example would be setting a color printer to default to B&W and duplex print. This is often done as a cost savings measure.
| lpa='/usr/sbin/lpadmin' | |
| ${lpa} -p CopyThat -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v lpd://10.89.170.5 \ | |
| -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 7855.gz" | |
| ${lpa} -p CopyThat -o Duplex=DuplexNoTumble -o XROutputColor=PrintAsGrayscale |
I hope this has inspired you to dive further into setting up printers via script.
Identify EFI Fiery Driver
In this post I talked about how we can use the lpadmin command to add a printer via script. In this post we will cover how we can identify the driver for an EFI Fiery RIP. Note: all Fiery RIPs do not use the same driver, so you will want to follow this process for any Fiery you may have in your environment.
Open your favorite web browser and enter the IP address (or DNS name) for the printer. This should take you to the Fiery RIP webpage.
Now, click on the Configure tab, then on the “Check for product updates” link.
This will open up a new tab in your browser that will take you to the EFI Fiery live update page. From here you’ll want to click on the Printer Drivers tab and then scroll to locate the latest printer driver.
We’ve scrolled down to locate the latest driver that handles macOS 10.14 Mojave.
We can then click the Download link to download the latest version of the Fiery driver for our specific model of Fiery.
One Last Thing
Now that you have your driver downloaded, I would strongly suggest heading over to Foigus’ post, Trial By Fiery, to find out how to use AutoPKG to create a driver package that will install via a management tool, and not have update dialogs popping up.
Deploying Printers via Script
Deploying printers on the Mac in an enterprise environment, or heck, just in a small office environment, can be done in multiple ways. If you don’t have a management tool, or ARD, you’re going to be running around doing it by hand. If you have a management tool, like Munki or Jamf, then you can deploy printers in a more automated fashion. My preferred method is to use a Bash script to deploy printers because it provides me a little more flexibility
Identify The Driver
The first thing to do is to identify the printer and the driver that is required. For most printers this is pretty simple, just navigate to the IP address of the printer to verify the make and model, then head over to the vendor’s website to download the latest driver. Once you have the driver, install it on your machine and then go find the driver file on your system. On the Mac, most printer drivers are stored in:
/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources
If your printer has a “RIP”, or “Raster Image Processor“, identifying those drivers can be a little trickier. Head over to this post on how to identify the driver, and download it, on an EFI Fiery RIP. Drivers for an EFI Fiery or other RIP are usually stored in:
/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/<localization folder>
For us here in North America, that folder path would be:
/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj
Once you have identified the driver, copy the full path of the driver file (Option-Command-C, or hold down Command then Edit->Copy as Pathname, or right click while holding Command) to your clipboard.
Build The Command
The next thing we need to do is figure out the command to run to add the printer. Fire up Terminal and let’s figure out the commands to use. We will utilize the lpadmin command to get the printer on the system. For this post this is what our command will look like:
sudo lpadmin -p <name> -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v ipp://1.1.1.1 -D "<name>" -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz"
That looks a little daunting, so let’s break it down a little bit.
-p <name> This flag sets the name of the printer as seen by the cups process. Use a name with no spaces, or substitute underscores for the space.
-E This flag enables the printer to accept jobs
-o printer-is-shared=false The -o flag allows us to pass options to the printer. In this case we are making sure the printer is not shared on the network.
-v ipp://1.1.1.1 The -v flag sets the URI of the printer.
-D <name> Where -p set the name the cups process saw, the -D flag sets what I call the “friendly” name, the name that is visible in the GUI.
-P <driver path> Pretty self explanatory, the -P flag sets the path to the driver.
Now that we have everything, run the command in Terminal to add the printer. You can verify the printer added by using the lpstat -a command. With the printer added, open up a program and send a test print to the printer. It is important for us to do this step so that we know our handy work is working properly.
Put It In A Script
Let’s get to the script to add the printer. Open your favorite code editor (TextMate or Sublime Text for me) and start a new script. I utilize Bash, but you could just as easily do this in Python if you prefer. First we want to make sure the proper driver is on the system, and if it isn’t we want to install it.
| if [[ ! -f "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz" ]]; then | |
| /usr/local/bin/jamf policy -trigger xeroxGenericDriver | |
| fi |
If the driver file is not on the system, we call the jamf binary to trigger our install policy. Adjust this to fit your management toolset.
Now with the driver check complete, we use a case statement to choose the printer (or printers) to install. We pass the choice to the script using Script Parameters in our Jamf Pro server policy. Here’s an example showing how we can install one printer, or multiple printers in an office.
| lpa='/usr/sbin/lpadmin' | |
| case $printer in | |
| Printer1) | |
| ${lpa} -p Printer1 -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v ipp://10.1.1.1/ipp/print \ | |
| -D "Printer1" -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz" | |
| ;; | |
| Printer2) | |
| ${lpa} -p Printer2 -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v ipp://10.1.1.2/ipp/print \ | |
| -D "Printer2" -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz" | |
| ;; | |
| OfficePrinters) | |
| ${lpa} -p Printer1 -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v ipp://10.1.1.1/ipp/print \ | |
| -D "Printer1" -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz" | |
| ${lpa} -p Printer2 -E -o printer-is-shared=false -v ipp://10.1.1.2/ipp/print \ | |
| -D "Printer2" -P "/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5955.gz" | |
| ;; | |
| esac |
You can hopefully see the flexibility this provides us for using one script to install multiple printers. Sure, we still have multiple policies in the JPS, but rather than have multiple printers or multiple scripts as well, we can do this with just the one. And, when a printer needs to change, we just edit the script.
Bonus Round
What about adding printer options, like paper trays or output trays or setting a printer to B&W instead of color? We can use lpoptions to figure out what those options are and to set them. Since that can be a daunting task, head over to this post about using lpoptions to identify the settings.
Hopefully this post has helped you evaluate the use of a script to add printers and has given you a new tool for your toolbox.
The Geeky Gordo 