Printer Deployment
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@Joe-Gill not to my knowledge. Otherwise I would have done so in the PrinterManagerHelper. I’ll keep digging around though. I suppose I could extract the hardware ID and link that to the generalized driver windows generates on installation and then parse that for more details.
I built a FOG driver pack generator from scratch awhile ago that when run on a computer extracted all used drivers to an existing pack. I could canabalize that to get the printer driver. Unfortantly window’s driver system is anything but pretty.
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@Joe-Gill can’t say I’ve ever voluntarily used what I call bloat ware from a manufacturer to install drivers for anything. I’ve always used device manager and specified exactly the file to use. Normally drivers are sorted into folders in a download. Normally an EXE has an option to only extract drivers, or as a last resort, after you see it extract drivers, use task manager to kill the exe and then go find the drivers.
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@Joe-Schmitt as shown in other communications I don’t know where this issue is occurring. Currently all info seems to be passed correctly. Including invalid host certificate (bad naming but that’s from the past anyway.). The server, in current trunk is sending the ihc flag unencrypted and not in Json string. I can only surmise there may be something else causing this issue, for example the flag is coming from a node/time when we both were not aware of the ihc issue altogether.
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Well, I pretty much gave up on using FOG for Xerox printers. I know the driver DLL file the printer uses and pretty much everything else from the WIndows Test Page… But I still can’t seem to get it.
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I remoted in and helped. The issue was with the printer configuration. The
Modelfield wasn’t quite right. -
Is the 600 second delay for the host, the amount of time between when the host checks the server for an update?
What is the Windows command prompt command used to force the host to update?
@Joe-Schmitt I was able to get the Print Manager software to install one of the printers using a new network share I setup. So now it’s just testing to see if the host installs it correctly from the server. Thanks again for the help yesterday!
Cheers,
Joe Gill
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@Joe-Gill there is no way to force the client to checkin. As for your checkin time, depending on how many clients you have, 600 seconds may be a tad excessive. v0.10+ of the client generates significantly less traffic than 0.9 did.
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Right now mine is set to 60 - having no problems with 500 hosts.
our bigger fog system has well over 1K hosts, all with the latest client. I’ve not seen any load issues on it either, albeit most of those 1K hosts have not all been turned on at once - yet.
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Well I was wrong. I mis-remembered 600 sec. It’s actually set to 60 sec.
I must still have something not set right in FOG. Those two printers we looked at last night are both pointing to the correct network location and I still have no printers being installed. Arg…
I plugged in the identical settings into the FOG Printer Manager Helper using the current network location and it installed just fine. No problem at all.
I’m assuming you’ll tell me it’s a system issue with the anonymous user. If it is, what exactly needs to be set?
What is the command to force the client to check with the server?
Is their anything I can check to see what’s going on?
I will be around again after 3 PM MST if you’d like to remote in.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Joe
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What OS are you hosting your share on? Is it an actual Windows Server or a desktop OS. If so, what version? Unfortunately anonymous read shares in windows vary greatly in their setup depending on the OS and OS build.
Again, there is no way to force the client to checkin.
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@Joe-Gill You could host the drivers on a linux share. It’s an option. Here’s a tutorial I wrote:
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Password_Protected_Samba_ShareThis can easily be modified for anonymous read for everyone.
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@Joe-Schmitt That share is hosted on our Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 2 server. Thanks for repeating your response on forcing the service. I failed to read that. LOL!
All I did when I created that share was follow the share “wizard” and plugged in all of the settings for the various users that need access to the share, including “anonymous login”. You can see the settings in the previous post that I made for “anonymous login”.
@Wayne-Workman I may go that way. I’ve set Samba shares up a bunch of times with no problems and I do have a FreeNAS server setup too. I like the Samba shares better. So we’ll see. I’d kind of like to use the Windows Server for this one though.
Thanks guys!
Cheers,
Joe
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@Joe-Gill afaik you have to grant access to the “everyone”-group not anonymous. Don’t forget to set permissions in both sharing and security-tab.
I’m wondering, why you install the printer with a snapin? If you can unzip the driver-package, you can put the unzipped files to your share and point directly to the appropriate inf-file instead of ntprint.inf in the fog printer-settings.
I’m using this method with different epson models and a generic driver. As the printer-model is only detected automatically if the printer is online, I’m using config-files to prevent problems.Greets,
Michael -
@Joe-Gill I’d strongly recommend getting off the 2003 server. That’s been End of Life and non-supported for nearly what, 18 months now?
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@Bob-Henderson I’m with you. We just updated one of our servers to 2008 here this year for our AD. I’m the new guy in the shop and we have budgets to make in a small district. It is what it is at this point.
I’m just happy I’ve been able to at least dedicate some space on our virtual boxes to Linux to run FOG.
@michael_f I have set our driver package on the share and am going to hopefully get ours going the same way. We shall see!
@Joe-Schmitt I still haven’t gotten this set up correctly. If you get a minute this evening, let me know. I’ll be here until 5 MST. I’ll be on and off the forums all afternoon.
I appreciate all of the advice!!
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@Joe-Gill Can you verify that a normal user can access the share with windows explorer without providing credentials?
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@michael_f I verified and I have access to the share as a user without entering credentials.
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@Joe-Gill that doesn’t mean it’s setup correctly. A normal user counts as a domain user and a domain bound machine.
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@Joe-Gill As Joe Schmidt says, maybe the share is not setup correctly. Nevertheless I would try the following, costs you 5 minutes:
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put the unzipped files to the share
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figure out the path to the inf-file and set the path in printer-management dialog, Printer Config File can be left blank, the other settings should be fine
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Assign the printer to a client and see, if it gets installed. If not, check fog.log
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@michael_f Looks like I’m headed the LInux Samba share route for now. I know that setup better. The Server 2003 is being a pain.
@Joe-Schmitt remoted in to our server and well it wasn’t being very kind. It still has permissions issues.
