iPrint (Novell) and Dell Printers. Need Help!

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Level 1

55 points

iPrint (Novell) and Dell Printers. Need Help!

I need some help here.

Santa Clara University has bought several of the Dell M5100, M5110, and M5200 and 5300 Printers. However, the problem is when installing the drivers for any of the printers I mentioned above using iPrint (Novell Software) I get the following error "

iPrinter encountered a problem trying to install the printer. The filter (s) specified in the PPD could not be found/resolved."

This happens with Dell Printer and using OS 10.3 and 10.4.7. I've contacted our Apple Engineer he is working on this issue as well. What I want to find out if anyone else has encountered this problem. If so, how do you fix this issue?

Thank you

Phil

G5 Dual 2.0 processor, Mac OS X (10.3.9), Dell Printer M5300

Posted on Sep 19, 2006 8:39 AM

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Answer 1

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Sep 19, 2006 3:10 PM in response to Phil Erskine

Hello Phil,

If only the ppd has been copied to the Broker, rather than the full driver, the dmg file downloaded from the iPrint Client will be missing the filter that it requires. Have a look at he ppd to see what it is looking for - it mustn't be one of the pre-installed filters.

Regards,

Paul

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Answer 2

Phil Erskine Author

Level 1

55 points

Sep 19, 2006 4:58 PM in response to PAHU

Hi Paul,

How do I locate the PPD of iPrint? I've already loaded the driver but still get the error. Where would the drivers be located? You'd mentioned the Broker, not sure what that is.

Do you have instructions on how I can check this out?

Thank you

phil

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Answer 3

PAHU

Level 6

16,723 points

Sep 20, 2006 1:33 AM in response to Phil Erskine

Hi Phil,

The Broker is an NDPS object that has a few tasks, one of which is the management of resources, such as printer drivers.

When you add Windows, Mac or Linux drivers to the NDPS Broker, you do so via the Resource Management Service. This is the section where you will be clicking on the Mac tab and then browsing to the Dell driver. It is the ppd within the driver that will be referencing the filter. If these are PostScript lasers, then you may find the ppd simply by browsing the contents of the driver. However, if they use some other language, then the ppd will be part of the installer and may not be visible until it is actually installed on the Mac.

When you click on the printer link on the Mac via the iPrint
browser window, a disk image of the driver should be downloaded and the installation run. This is where the process may be coming undone. A normal Dell Mac driver installation will probably create a local folder where a number of plugins and the filter are copied to. But the download/installation from iPrint will not always create this folder, especially if there is permission issues (such as the admin account/password is required to complete the installation). And since the ppd that will be installed mentions that a particular filter is required, mainly so that the printers language can be accomodated, then you will get the error when said filter is not present.

So, what to do next. You need to find out which filter is required by checking the ppd. If you can't find the ppd, then you may be stuck with having to install the driver manually on each Mac. What Novell fails to tell everyone is that the use of iPrint is for printers that don't require non-standard filters, that is, filters that are already installed as part of the Mac system. From my experience, drivers that require their own filter generally have problems with installation or with operation.

Regards,

Paul

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