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Adding and removing/deleting/ignoring printers

On Windows

PaperCut NG tracks all print queues local to the system by default. Local print queues are those that have been set up on the server running PaperCut NG with a local port, such as: a TCP/IP connection to a network printer, an LPRThe Line Printer Remote protocol (LPR) is a network protocol for submitting print jobs to a remote printer. A server for the LPD/LPR protocol listens for requests on TCP port 515. A request begins with a byte containing the request code, followed by the arguments to the request, and is terminated by an ASCII LF character. An LPD printer is identified by the IP address of the server machine and the queue name on that machine. Many different queue names may exist in one LPD server, with each queue having unique settings. The LPR software is installed on the client device. connection, or a printer attached locally via USB or LPT. Standard Windows print queues that are hosted on a different system, or re-shared, are not tracked (you can track these queues by setting up a secondary print serverA print server is a system responsible for hosting print queues and sharing printer resources to desktops. Users submit print jobs to a print server rather then directly to the printer itself. A print server can be a dedicated server but on many networks this server also performs other tasks, such as, file serving, see Configuring secondary print servers and locally attached printers).

New print queues added to the system should show up automatically in PaperCut NG, however, in some rare situations the printer shows up only after the first print job is sent.

Under some situations you might not want to track all printers. Some examples of why an administrator might not want to monitor a printer include:

The Print ProviderA Print Provider is a monitoring service installed on a secondary print server to allow PaperCut to control and track printers. This monitoring component intercepts the local printing and reports the use back to the primary Application Server. component is responsible for locating and tracking the printers. To instruct it to ignore a printer:

  1. On the computer system hosting the queue to be added/removed/ignored, open the file [app_dir]\providers\print\win\print-provider.conf in a text editor such as Notepad.

  2. Locate the line IgnorePrinters= and enter the full name of the printer on the right-hand-side of the equals line. For example:

    IgnorePrinters=Office Printer

    Note: This is the printer's locally assigned name and not the name of its network share.

    If you have multiple printers to ignore, then separate the each printer name with a comma. For example:

    IgnorePrinters=Office Printer,Copy Room Printer

    Wildcard expressions can also be used. Use '*' to ignore any span of characters, and '?' to ignore a single character. For example, to ignore any printers that start with the phrase Copy Room:

    IgnorePrinters=Copy Room*

  3. Restart (stop then start) the PaperCut Print Provider component under Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services

  4. If the printer data is no longer required for reporting purposes:

    1. Click the Printers tab.

      The Printer List page is displayed.

    2. Select a printer.

      The Printer Details - Summary page is displayed.

    3. In the Actions menu, click Delete this printer.

  5. Test the changes by printing to the deleted printer and ensuring the printer does not re-register itself in the system. It if does, verify the name assigned under the IgnorePrinters= setting is correct.

On Mac

The list of monitored printers is configured when installing PaperCut NG. To change the list of monitored printers, run the script at /Applications/PaperCut NG/Control Printer Monitoring.command. Read the script's instructions carefully and ensure that the Print Setup Utility is closed/quit when running this script.

After running the script, print a test document (i.e. using a text editor or printing a web page from Safari). The act of printing for the first time registers the printer with the primary server. Log in to PaperCut NG as admin and verify that the printers are now listed on the Printer List page. Perform a test print on each printer and verify that the jobs are tracked correctly.

Note:

At the technical level, Mac systems use the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPSCommon User Printing System (CUPS) is a printing system for Unix operating systems that allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print jobs from client computers, process them, and send them to the appropriate printer.). PaperCut NG tracks printing by integrating with CUPS. (For SysAdmins familiar with CUPS, PaperCut NG integrates by wrapping or proxying the CUPS backend). The Control Printer Monitoring.command script edits the file /etc/cups/printers.conf and prefixes the DeviceURI with papercut:, enabling monitoring on the selected printer. SysAdmins experienced with the terminal might prefer to edit the printers.conf file directly with a text editor. See On Linux for more details.

To delete a printer:

  1. Double-click the Control Printer Monitoring.command script.

  2. Choose to disable monitoring on the printer(s) to delete.

  3. If the printer data is no longer required for reporting purposes:

    1. Click the Printers tab.

      The Printer List page is displayed.

    2. Select a printer.

      The Printer Details - Summary page is displayed.

    3. In the Actions menu, click Delete this printer.

  4. Test the changes by printing to the deleted printer and ensuring the printer does not re-register itself in the system. It if does, verify that it is not being monitored using Control Printer Monitoring.command.

On Linux

PaperCut NG tracks printing by integrating with the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS), the printing system on Linux. For a printer to be tracked, CUPS needs to be told to route print jobs through PaperCut NG before printing.

To do this, the printers.conf file must be edited. This can either be done manually, or assisted via the configure-cups script.

To use the script, run the script file at [app-path]/providers/print/linux-*/configure-cups. Read the script's instructions carefully to enable monitoring on the desired printers.

To edit the file manually:

  1. Open your printers.conf in a text editor such as vim. On most Linux distributions printers.conf is located at /etc/cups/printers.conf.

  2. Prepend papercut: to the DeviceURI of the printers you want to track. After the modification a DeviceURI line might look like:

    DeviceURI papercut:ipp://1.2.3.4/printers/My_Printer

  3. Restart CUPS in the way appropriate to your distribution. E.g.:

    /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

  4. Perform a test print on each printer. This causes the printers to be registered. This step is not required with the configure-cups script, because the script registers the printers automatically.

  5. The printers should now be registered. Log in to PaperCut NG as admin and verify that the printers are now listed on the Printer List page. Verify that the test prints sent previously were tracked correctly.

To delete a printer:

  1. Double-click the configure-cups script (or manually edit printers.conf); then select to disable monitoring on the printer(s) to delete.

  2. If the printer data is no longer required for reporting purposes:

    1. Click the Printers tab.

      The Printer List page is displayed.

    2. Select a printer.

      The Printer Details - Summary page is displayed.

    3. In the Actions menu, click Delete this printer.

  3. Test the changes by printing to the deleted printer and ensuring the printer does not re-register itself in the system. If it does, verify that it is not being monitored using configure-cups.