[cups] [#NHK-253-64130]: Secondary Mac Print Server

[Douglas Kosovic]

Hi Matt,

In my faculty we have more than 30 Canon ImageRunner and ImageRunner Advance MFPs of various models. We also use PaperCut. and a Linux CUPS server

We complained to Canon about the poor performance of the UFRII drivers on MacOS X and Linux (which don't understand fonts so vectorize every single character in a document and spend an eternity rasterizing on the printer) and were able to get the Postscript upgrade kits cheaply for the our UFRII only printer. I'm not familiar with CodeHost Linux drivers which are not available outside North America.

Canon provides a PPD .dmg file bundle for MacOS X (which we copy the PPDs to a Linux CUPS server) , it was mentioned in an email below. The .dmg file I use is from :
   http://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/0100267504.html

The PPDs work well and have all of the finishing options that we need. Main issues include:
- no pin option for secure printing.
- Doesn't have APDialogExtension lines in the PPDs for the custom Canon dialog boxes from the Canon MacOS X PS driver.
- Doesn't have the APPrinterIconPath in the PPDs for the custom Canon printer icon.

It is possible to use the custom Canon dialog boxes and Icon from the Canon MacOS X PS driver with a bit of modification to the plain driver free PPD files, but would involve having to install the Canon MacOS X PS driver as the APDialogExtension and APPrinterIconPath attributes don't support http/https URIs.



Cheers,
Doug


On 21/01/2014, at 4:13 AM, Matt Hanson wrote:

> Hello, I am a network tech for Springfield School District in Vermont, and
> am at a loss of where to go for help with a driver interoperability issue
> we are having with CUPS.
> 
> 
> *This is a quick overview: *
> Our PaperCut server is running Ubuntu 12.04 and we have both Mac, Linux,
> and Windows machines printing through it.  Other than this issue it is in
> good working order.
> 
> This particular problem is only effecting the Macs printing to our new
> Canon Image Runner 5255 and 6265 MFPs.  Other OSs are printing through the
> same ques operate without issue.
> 
> From what I have been able to determine this problem is being caused by the
> Linux driver that CUPS pushes to Mac clients. I would like to be able to
> tell CUPS to hand out a specific driver to Mac clients, but have not been
> able to find documentation on how to do so.
> 
> Canon's Linux driver is provided by CodeHost -
> http://www.codehost.com/brightq-pro.php
> 
> The Mac driver is provided directly by Canon -
> http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/office/products/hardware/multifunction_printers_copiers/imageRUNNER_ADVANCE_Series_Models/imagerunner_advance_c5255#DriversAndSoftware
> 
> 
> Here is how I was able to isolate the issue:
> 
> When I setup the printer using normal methods on a mac client machine, then
> substitute the driver from Canon's website rather than the one pushed out
> by CUPS our printing problems go away.
> 
> 
> 
> What I would like to do is be able to have the CUPS server hand out the
> native Mac OS driver rather than the Linux one. There is plenty of
> documentation on how to push drivers for Windows, but I have not been able
> to figure out how to get this to be configurable/customizable for Macs.
> 
> Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> 
> 
> Thank You,
> 
> Matt
> 
> *Full thread is below:*
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Stéphane Peter <speter at codehost.com>
> Date: Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 4:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [#NHK-253-64130]: Secondary Mac Print Server
> To: Matt Hanson <mhanson at ssdvt.org>
> Cc: Christopher Moody <cmoody at ssdvt.org>
> 
> 
> Hi Matt,
> 
> Well, as the Papercut guys pointed out, the way CUPS advertises the printer
> drivers on the network is by publicizing the PPD files for the queues. So
> if you installed our software on the Linux server, then CUPS will be using
> our modified PPDs and sending that to clients trying to connect to it. This
> is how the list of job options is populated on the Mac side.
> 
> The Mac drivers from Canon also include PPD files, however they are
> slightly different than the ones we include with our Linux driver since
> they also contain additional information used by the filters on the Mac
> side, and any other customizations that Canon included in their Mac
> software (which often includes references to filters that need to be
> installed on the Mac). So if the PPD file provided by the CUPS server is
> the one from BrightQ, it will not include these additional pieces from the
> original Mac driver and will be treated as a regular PostScript driver with
> the options from the PPD. This is probably where the problems on the Mac
> side start happening.
> 
> Alternatively, you could get the PPD from the Mac driver and manually
> install it for a new queue on the CUPS server. However, this will not
> necessarily solve your problems either as there is probably more than just
> the PPD file, i.e. the other driver files the PPD depends on will not get
> pushed to the Macs. So in this case it is quite likely that job submission
> will fail altogether…
> 
> Having just downloaded the Mac drivers from Canon, it looks like they have
> two different variants of the drivers available. Their “PS” drivers include
> PPDs with dependencies on a couple of additional filters that need to be
> installed on the Mac. They also provide a “PPD” set of drivers which seem
> to be independent of any additional filters. The latter would probably work
> a lot better if you set it up on the CUPS server. So my recommendation
> would be to get the PPD files from the .dmg, copy these to the Ubuntu
> server and use those to set up a new queue from the CUPS interface. This
> would be the closest to an automatic deployment of the Mac drivers. You may
> want to keep the BrightQ queues around for Linux clients as well (if you
> have any).
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> --
> Stéphane Peter
> Senior Software Engineer
> Codehost, Inc.
> 
>