talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

I just got a new printer: the HP PSC 2110 all-in-one. It works very well, now, and fits the limited space I have in the home office. The major delay was waiting for the drivers to be released by HP. Although I bought it at the beginning of October, the drivers (for 10.2) were not released until end of the month. A few more unanticipated non-printing weeks while waiting for those drivers!

Unfortunately, HP doesn't seem to recognize that it might be nice to make the printer available over the network and provides no instructions on how to make it so. After combing through a number of posts on Mac OS X Hints, I finally figured out the solution. Since the CUPS documenation on OS X is rather thin, this involved an annoying amount of trial and error to get things working right. I probably did a few things I didn't need to do, such as installing Gimp-Print and ESP Ghostscript, so now that I've had to reinvent the steps again after updating the server to 10.2.2, I thought I'd make a record of what's required.

On the print server (the computer that the printer is connected to):

• (re)install the HP AIO drivers for the 2110
  
• find the PPD for the 2110 and copy it to /Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/
  
• fire up Print Center and delete the entry for the 2110
  
• Add a new printer, but hold down the option key while clicking the button
  
• select Advanced and pick the Device: PSC 2100 Series
  
• If all goes well, you should see a Device URI of usb://Hewlett-Packard/PSC%202100%20Series?serial="your printer's serial number"
  

Change Device Name to something meaningful for you. Finally, Add it!

The key is that you have a reasonable Device URI (noted above), rather than the file://null that HP's default installation gives you. On the client machines: sudo pico /etc/cups/client.conf uncomment the ServerName change myhost.domain.com to either the IP address or machine name of your server. In my setup, I use just the hostname of the server and let it be found via Rendezvous by including "local." in the Search Domains in the Network module of System Preferences. Finally, restart cupsd on your client computer: sudo killall -HUP cupsd. Bring up Print Center on the client and you should see your new PSC 2110 all ready to print! Simple, actually. If only Apple and HP would document it and/or just enable it from the start!

Update: looks like 10.2.3 does the right thing and makes the printer available on the network without all this fuss. I guess I was just a couple of months to early...