Pcounter LPR & OS X Guide
Pcounter LPR & OS X Guide
Pcounter LPR & OS X Guide
Copyright © 2017
A.N.D. Technologies
4104 24th Street #627
San Francisco, CA 94114
USA
E-Mail: [email protected]
Web: http://www.pcounter.com
Phone: (415) 701-9222
Fax: (415) 651-9000
Also covered in this guide is setup and testing of the Pcounter Client for OS X (PcounterClient.dmg).
8) Port 515 is now open in the Windows Firewall and the server should now be able to receive LPR
print jobs. Please note though that other firewalls may be present on the server or network that
block port 515. Other firewalls must be managed by a site representative.
5) Click OK after making all necessary changes, then restart the Pcounter Printer Control service
before testing.
6) Make note of the server’s IP address as it will be used to create LPR printers on both OS X and
Windows.
8) Set a printer name as needed and click next. This is what the workstation users will see as the
printer’s name.
9) Set sharing to ‘do not share this printer’, click next, and finally click finish to create the printer.
10) Immediately go into the newly created printer’s printer properties and choose the port tab.
Click on ‘Configure Port’.
3) On the Windows Workstation that has the LPR printer setup, open printer properties and click
on ‘print test page’.
(For help setting up a LPR Printer on a Windows workstation, consult section 2.1.1 of this guide)
5) Make note of the job owner. It may not always be what is expected or needed as LPR printing is
unauthenticated.
To change the owner of the job, likely the Pcounter Popup will be needed.
For more info on the Pcounter Popup, consult our Pcounter Popup Training Video here.
6) If the LPR job was not received, consult the LPR Troubleshooting section of this guide.
5) For ‘Address’ enter the IP address of the server running the Pcounter LPD Server.
For ‘Protocol’ choose LPD.
For ‘Queue’ enter the LPR Queue Name as defined in the Pcounter LPD Server configuration.
For ‘Name’ enter the name that will be displayed to the user as the printer’s name.
7) For basic printing, use the Generic PostScript or Generic PCL driver options.
For advanced printing, choose a full featured driver using the ‘Select Software’ option to open
the list of installed print drivers on the OS X Workstation then choose a driver, or use the
‘Other’ option to manually select a driver file (.PPD) from a local or network location.
2.2.2 - OS X Testing
Testing a Windows LPR print queue requires access to the Pcounter Server, the workstation in question,
and the physical printer itself.
To start:
1) On the Pcounter Server, open Pcontrol and locate queue that will be tested in the main
window.
2) Right click the print queue and choose ‘pause printing’. This will pause the queue at a Windows
level and prevent all jobs from printing, thus allowing us to view an LPR received job.
When the little check mark symbol is visible, printing is paused on that queue.
4) If the job is received by the server successfully, it will be displayed in the Pcontrol print queue
view. Look at the time submitted to confirm.
5) Make note of the job owner. It may not always be what is expected or needed as LPR printing is
unauthenticated.
To change the owner of the job, likely the Pcounter Popup will be needed.
For more info on the Pcounter Popup, consult our Pcounter Popup Training Video here.
6) If the LPR job was not received, consult the LPR Troubleshooting section of this guide.
2) When the PcounterClient.dmg is launched, drag the PcounterClient app icon into the
‘applications’ directory on the OS X workstation.
3) When the client is launched, it will display a printer icon in the task bar.
4) To view the client’s configuration window, hold the special ‘options’ or ‘command’ or ‘control’
key down on the OS X keyboard then, with the key still held down, launch the client to display
the Pcounter Client Configuration Window.
6) All preferences are discussed in this guide in the section ‘Client Preferences’.
7) For help configuring the .dmg to launch at OS X startup, please refer to Apple support.
Servers – To specify a Pcounter server that the Client should poll, click the + sign, enter the server name
or IP address and click OK. (The – button removes a server from the list.
HTTPS Port – By default, the OS X Client is set up to use the SSL secure port: 7443. This setting appears
on the Services and Ports tab in Pcontrol, running on the Windows Print Server, and can be customized.
Poll Interval - When the OS X Client Preferences menu is selected, the user will see a list of servers to
which printer connections have been made. The OS X Client will poll each of these servers for popup
jobs once per specified interval (in seconds). Each poll consists of only one HTTPS request. However, any
servers that are not running Pcounter or are hosting print queues where popups are not required can be
deselected, in order to save network bandwidth.
Once the OS X Client has been configured as desired, it can be copied to other workstations and will
retain the saved configuration.
3. Verify that the Pcounter Server you are printing to is listed in the Server List with OK
status.
Verify that the Port listed in the Preferences matches the secure port used by the
Pcounter Printer Control service to connect to the Popup client. (By default, the port
used by the service is 7443.)
Once the ADS credentials are saved in the Keychain, the OS X Client will remember the
credentials. The user will not be required to re-authenticate in future sessions.
If multiple users will log onto the same Mac …
Leave the Keychain Login at Launch option unchecked.
When the Mac Client is added to the Login items in the Mac Account preferences, the Client
window will appear at login. Each user may enter their personal ADS Credentials, which will be
remembered for that session when the Pcounter Server is configured as described below.
Set Mac Client to request authentication upon startup (and automatically submit recorded ID
with each Pcounter print job):
A small registry modification must be made on the Pcounter print server for the OS X Client to
automatically display an authentication request upon startup:
1) Open Regedit on the Pcounter server and navigate to HKLM\Software\PCounter (or
HKLM\Software\Wow6432\PCounter on x64 platforms).
Note: If multiple users will print from the OS X during a single session conducted under a generic user
login (such as “Student”), then the auto-authenticate options described in this section should not be
used. The Mac Client should be left at its default settings: to pop up after each print job—so that the
individual user currently sitting at the machine can be requested to authenticate to the Pcounter server
with their own ADS credentials.
<LoginPromptType>
0 = No prompt
1 = Prompt when a print job is available
2 = Manual login from menu (turn icon red if session inactive to get attention, or similar)
3 = Active prompt, always display login if session inactive
Options in session:
<DisplayBalance>
(Boolean) Is Account balance display available
<AutoID>
(0 or 1) Auto reply ID on all print jobs that are seen
<NoPopup>
(0 or 1) Never have a popup prompt. Only account balance display and/or receive messages (like
Wbalance, should do another API to only receive notification messages).
<SessionTimeout>
(Integer) Auto-logout inactivity timer. Zero disables.