Table of Contents
This section covers the setup of a secondary print server in "Quick Start" format. For a detailed explanation of the underlying technology and what's happening behind the scenes see the subsequent sections.
A secondary print server is a system that directly hosts a printer. In many situations it may be a dedicated server, however a secondary server may also be a desktop system hosting a directly attached USB printer. If this printer is to be controlled and tracked by PaperCut NG, a small monitoring component needs to be installed. The monitoring component intercepts the local printing and reports this use back to the primary Application Server. A secondary server may either be:
A server style system hosting many printers.
A desktop style system hosting printer(s) also shared to other network users.
A desktop style system with the printer used only for local users (not shared).
The monitoring service is also referred to as a Print Provider as its task is to provide information back to the main Application Server.
The process of setting up a secondary print server, depends on the operating system. Read the section appropriate to the required operating system.
This section describes the process of setting up a secondary Windows print server.
Before installing a secondary server you should take some time to ensure the primary server (central application server) is set up and running correctly. If it is not running fine now adding an extra server will only "add an extra variable to the equation" and complicate troubleshooting. Take some time now to verify that the primary server is functioning correctly. For example, verify that:
Printers on this server are being tracked.
Users are allowed to login to user pages from their workstations.
Administrators can access the system.
Secondary server needs to communicate (initiate a TCP connection) on port 9191. Administrators should ensure that any firewall software on the primary Application Server is not set to block any incoming local network traffic on this port.
Install the print provider software onto the secondary server. On a Windows server, this is done by selecting the "Secondary Print Server" option in the installation wizard. If the PaperCut Primary Server software was previously installed on the server it must be uninstalled prior to installing the Secondary Server software.
The Print Provider on the secondary server needs to know where the primary server is installed.
Open a text editor such as Notepad.
Open the file:
[app-path]\providers\print\win\print-provider.conf
Locate the line starting with ApplicationServer= and change localhost
to the name or IP address of the primary server.
Restart the server so the new configuration is detected. To avoid a restart, an administrator may also choose to manually restart the PaperCut Print Provider service.
The secondary server should now be configured. Log into the system as "admin" and verify that the printers are now listed under the Printers section. Perform a multi-page test print on each printer and verify that print jobs are tracked correctly.
The installation of the secondary server component on Windows systems can be automated. This may be handy when the Print Provider component needs to be installed on a number of desktop systems running locally attached printers. For more information see, the section called “Automating Secondary Server Deployment on Windows”.
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