10-26-2011, 10:13 PM

Should be a simple task... I'm obviously missing something simple.

Trying to get a network printer in OS X SERVER 10.6.8 working.

Here's the details....

I have a HP C4380 inkjet connected to my server (10.6.8) via USB. If I follow the Apple Printer Admin manual, p25, it says to configure the print queue "enter an IP or DNS name". I'm using USB.

SO... I deviate from the manual, and try this:

I setup a LOCAL printer, and it recognizes it just fine. Setup no problem.

Go back into Print Service, and now I see my printer queue - already setup - but no protocol is checked. And, my clients (10.6.8) can't see it, unless I check "LPR" and "Show name in bonjour".

Then, my clients can see it - however, when I add it, I have to manually select the "print using:" driver (c4380), and when sending a test page, the queue on the client simply says "In use" for 2 seconds, then "Paused" forever after. The server queue doesn't even show a job, nor is there anything in the logs that indicates that a job even came in.

Please help point me in the right direction,

Thanks,
Jason
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), i5 with Thunderbolt

10-26-2011, 10:34 PM

Unfortunately, Apple has done a terrible job with the driver APIs in OS X, and this continues to be the case even in Lion.

In some cases, if the driver was never designed to be used via a network port, you can't make it work that way. Windows definitely trumps OS X in that regard - you can dynamically reassign ports because the OS handles that piece.

More information is available here.

Your best bet would be to configure the printer with LPR and try to use one of the Gutenprint drivers (if one exists for that model). If it doesn't, you can try experimenting with other Gutenprint drivers that come close to matching that model's capabilities. You may also be able to use the PrintFab driver package, but it's not cheap.

Another option, of course, is to just scrap that printer and get one with a built-in print server (which are fairly ubiquitous these days). Then you needn't worry about serving it from one of your machines.