Where did that job come from?

[tAK]

Hi All,

Fingers crossed you can help me - ideas welcome too !

Environment: Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 64bit and Apple OSX 10.8.2/3/4, PaperCut NG 12.5, CISCO 3560x series switches,

Copier: Ricoh Aficio MPC 5502a (Pretty sure thats it, couldn't post this at work as the "new thread" page is blocked by our proxy.. )

Issue: We have a mixed OSX / Windows environment, and a print job from somewhere is causing PCL and/or Post script errors to spit out of the copier (Basically gremlin codes). The print job is not showing in Papercut, so I suspect a user has a local que directly to the copier with an incorrect driver, or is printing a corrupted PDF or other document (Potentially printing a corrupted document from a USB drive directly at the interface and running away?).

My issue is, after almost 4 weeks chasing users to tell me if they have printed and not received a document at the other end (or just garbage), nobody has come forward. We've wasted probably a dozen reems of paper so far because the copier room is out of earshot, so it spools out an entire drawer worth of paper in a go and nobody notices until they reach the machine. We even tried moving the printer over to a VLan so it had a different IP, and that stopped it for about a week.. then it started again..

So, basically, does anbody know a way I can see the IP or MAC address of where a print job came from? (papercut doesn't appear to log it, as we have re-imaged the machines that printed at around that time, and rested re-prints of those users documents). Or otherwise view what devices have a DIRECT connect to the copier on a regular basis?

EDIT: I cannot for the life of me replicate this fault !!

Thoughts, ideas and musing all welcome..

Cheers,
/tAK

[Bantams]

Re: Where did that job come from?

The printing garbage part is usually someone printing web page docs or pdfs from the web. you could set up the machine so it doesn't print and store files on the doc server instead to be retrieved by the operator and printed or deleted if they are garbage. Edit: Oh and update the firmware and the Print Driver might Help.

[RRodgers]

Re: Where did that job come from?

Hi All,

Fingers crossed you can help me - ideas welcome too !

Environment: Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 64bit and Apple OSX 10.8.2/3/4, PaperCut NG 12.5, CISCO 3560x series switches,

Copier: Ricoh Aficio MPC 5502a (Pretty sure thats it, couldn't post this at work as the "new thread" page is blocked by our proxy.. )

Issue: We have a mixed OSX / Windows environment, and a print job from somewhere is causing PCL and/or Post script errors to spit out of the copier (Basically gremlin codes). The print job is not showing in Papercut, so I suspect a user has a local que directly to the copier with an incorrect driver, or is printing a corrupted PDF or other document (Potentially printing a corrupted document from a USB drive directly at the interface and running away?).

My issue is, after almost 4 weeks chasing users to tell me if they have printed and not received a document at the other end (or just garbage), nobody has come forward. We've wasted probably a dozen reems of paper so far because the copier room is out of earshot, so it spools out an entire drawer worth of paper in a go and nobody notices until they reach the machine. We even tried moving the printer over to a VLan so it had a different IP, and that stopped it for about a week.. then it started again..

So, basically, does anbody know a way I can see the IP or MAC address of where a print job came from? (papercut doesn't appear to log it, as we have re-imaged the machines that printed at around that time, and rested re-prints of those users documents). Or otherwise view what devices have a DIRECT connect to the copier on a regular basis?

EDIT: I cannot for the life of me replicate this fault !!

Thoughts, ideas and musing all welcome..

Cheers,
/tAK

I'd start with the Mac's first.

[KenB]

Re: Where did that job come from?

If you can narrow down a time as to when it happens (easier said than done!), you could set up Wireshark to monitor the traffic, filtering out only packets headed for the printer.

I had that exact situation a few years ago. Turned out someone in the customer's computer lab was testing some software he wrote on a rogue NT4 server. Every so often it would just spit out random junk to various IP addresses, including the copier. Once we found the IP that the garbage was coming from, it was easy to track down.

[ryanb]

Re: Where did that job come from?

if you can convince whoever's in charge to do so, maybe you could employ and assign user codes and lock the machine down? then just track the user code?

[ruben]

Re: Where did that job come from?

Does the machine has PS option installed? If the Macs are printing direct without a PS option you will get garbage (if you are lucky, most of the time nothing at all). If the Macs are printing to a PaperCut (PC) queue on a Windows server, then it will use the Windows driver.

Has the machine been locked to a PC UI? If it has then lock the printing to valid users, go into the PC admin interface and see if any invalid users have attempted to print. (This assumes they are going through PC). You can't stop the users adding direct print queues if they have admin rights, which they shouldn't if their IT is worth anything. Get their IT to revoke all admin rights and change the copier's IP, and possibly hostname too.