Installing network printer times out
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I am trying to install a network printer and it is timing out, according to the fog client log.
Further down the log, in the “PrinterManager” it will say the printer “has already been configured.”
In the printer properties in the control panel of the computer, it shows that the IP address of the printer was applied but on the user interface it does not show a printer.Any ideas on what to do?
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@xburnerx00 said in Installing network printer times out:
it shows that the IP address of the printer was applied but on the user interface it does not show a printer.
Can you explain this in detail. Where do you see the IP being applied and in which User interface is it missing?
Probably best if you post screenshots here.
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The network printer that I am trying to install has an ip of 192.168.15.73. That address shows up under the ‘ports tab’ when you check ‘printer properties’ of other printers in the ‘devices and printers’ section in the control panel. But the network printer I am trying to install does not show up as an installed printer.
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@xburnerx00 Are you sure the printer doesn’t turn up after some more time?
Quoting a response from the fog-client developer here:
The printer should still get added. The process doesn’t get killed off, the client just stops caring about it.
But if it doesn’t you wanna read this post here as well: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8260/printer-not-showing-in-devices-fixup-to-1-3-0-rc-5
Check out the PrinterManagerHelper tool mentioned in that forum post. -
Thanks for the info. I had the computer running overnight and no printer ever came up. I looked more into the PrinterManagerHelper. I ran it on my work computer as a test, and it did install the printer, but now I can not remove the printer manually. I thought maybe the FOG client set the management level, so I changed fog ‘Host Printer configuration’ to No Printer Management. Tried again, but still can not remove printer. I can remove any other printer but not the one installed through the PrinterManagerHelper.
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@xburnerx00 Whooops. Can you delete it through Device Manager (see here)?
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Yes, thank you. Removing the printer through Device Management worked.
After removing the printer, I tried installing again through FOG, but this time I clicked on the printer name in the all printers section of Printer Management of FOG web interface and under the Membership tab I added the host. The printer was successfully installed.
When I first tried this, I went directly to the host machine in host management and went to Printers tab then added the printer to the host.
I am not sure if I was just doing it wrong the first time or if this is a bug.While I was typing this response, I also tried removing the printer through FOG. In the FOG web interface it does not show the printer being a member of any host under print management, and for the host itself it does not show a printer being a member. But on the computer itself, the printer is still installed and I am back not being able to remove it manually, and have to remove it by Device Manager.
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@xburnerx00 Printer management is not ideal in FOG. About removal of printers you wanna read this github issue: https://github.com/FOGProject/fog-client/issues/70 and https://github.com/FOGProject/fog-client/issues/90
Unfortunately I didn’t get to actually work on this over the quiet Christmas time and so this is still unsolved.
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Ok, thank you for the reply. It’s unfortunate, but I think I will hold off on using FOG as a printer manager for the time being.
Thank you.
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@xburnerx00 While I totally understand your point I might ask you to join the discussion on FOG printer manager so we can actually improve it. On the one hand side not very many people seem to wanna use the printer management anymore because of it’s shortcomings and on the other hand this topic is a little complex to test and work on from the developers point of view.
The situation is very unfortunate as we both tend to “hold off” because you feel it’s not going forward and I get the impression people don’t want to engage in discussing and testing what needs to be improved. But together we could make this a higher priority.
Would you start by explaining what exactly is causing the most trouble from your point of view and I start setting up the test/dev environment for printer development again?!
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I would very much like to join the discussion on this. Please remember though that I am just simply a computer tech for a school district. I don’t have the background or knowledge on software development or programming or anything like that. My main goal is simply trying to install printers that are already created on our print server in our district. Previously we had Novell Zenworks, the printer management in that was pretty great. I don’t know how familiar you are with Zenworks, but we simply made a printer policy which basically made a policy that linked a printer on our print server to a machine. Everytime a user logged in it would install the printer if it was not already created for the user, since we made the printer policy for the device and not the user.
As mentioned in this thread, the printer is created in FOG and the printer is pushed out to the machine, but we also need it to remove the printer. In my case it is not removing. I would need to manually remove it. I have not had time to try on different models to see if it’s a model specific problem, but this is where I am at now. In the future I plan to try other models, but since this is not high priority right now, I have pushed printer management to the side.
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@xburnerx00 Sorry for the delay! It’s a topic that I need time to work on and I didn’t have much of continuous time to focus on this.
I totally understand that you’d like FOG to remove printers from a PC again. Did you use “FOG Managed Printers” or “Only Assigned Printers” in the settings. Both should remove printers that are not assigned to the host.
That said I understand that you are in doubt as using the PrinterManagementHelper left you with an undeleteable printer and the fog-client wouldn’t even create your printer in the first place.
I have just spun up a test setup and cannot replicate any of the issues. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying there aren’t any problems with printer management but I can’t see them in my setup yet.
I have a Windows 10 1803 install, working as normal user (not Admin), assigned printers in the webUI were created properly and also removed when I unassigned the printer for this post.
As well I tested the PrinterManagementHelper, printer was created and I could also delete the printer (Right click -> delete) without any notice or issue.So I guess there is a lot we have to dig up first before we can address the issues. Let’s start by comparing the setups. Which version of Windows do you have and is the account you are working on an Administrator or normal user account?
I can imagine this being caused
But this task is not as trivial as you might guess. E.g. when you remove a printer from the list of printers for one particular computer we’d need to keep track of this in the background to be able to do the removal on the client PC itself. We
