Adding printers to multiple Macs

We are going to be upgrading 6 of our Xerox printers to newer models. After I push out the new printer drivers via ARD, is there a way for me to add the printers in System Preferences on one Mac, and somehow copy that to the other Macs? Are there files stored somewhere that represent those added printers that I could distribute to other computers?


I can't overwrite what is currently on these Macs, otherwise I'd use one System Image or Time Machine clone for all.


I will be adding printers to Mac Pro, Macbook, and iMac, all running Sierra or High Sierra. I do not want to have to visit each Mac (100+) and add these printers over and over.


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Mac Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.4), null

Posted on Aug 30, 2018 1:21 PM

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Aug 31, 2018 8:19 AM in response to WML_HL

You can in theory push out the driver installer via ARD and then push out the printer queue via some other management system. The way I did it was via Munki.


See also https://github.com/munki/munki/wiki/Managing-Printers-With-Munki


With Munki I created what are called 'payload free installers' which is basically an installer that does not install any software but does run some settings - in this case settings to add the printer queue. Thanks to the intelligence Munki has to allow defining dependencies you can also define that the installer for adding a particular queue 'depends' on first having the printer driver installed, it will therefore install the driver before adding the queue.


Here is the script I used to generate the Munki pkginfo file for the queue - https://github.com/nmcspadden/PrinterGenerator


It has its own instructions but to summarise you first create a CSV text file in which you define the settings for each print queue, then you run the script and it takes that information and generates a Munki pkginfo file which when added to Munki would be used to install the print queue. You would need to in Munki edit this pkginfo to define the fact it 'depends' on having the printer driver installed, and you would of course also put in Munki the printer driver installer. You mention you have Xerox printers, we have one so I have added the Xerox driver installer and as above a pkginfo to create a Xerox print queue.


The queue could point directly to the Xerox printer but in our case I point to a CUPS print server running on a Linux virtual machine which then in turns sends the job to the actual printer.


You obviously will need to get all your Mac 'enrolled' in to using your Munki system. This would be done by using ARD to push out the Munki client installer. You could also create an installer to push out the settings for the Munki software. I do all this as part of building a fresh Mac before issuing it to a user.

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Adding printers to multiple Macs

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