Restoring printers after Archive and Install upgrades

Dec 01, '03 08:46:00AM

Contributed by: surlydave

When you do an Archive & Install of either Jaguar or Panther, even if you select Restore User and Network Settings, printers that you had set up are no longer there. It is pretty easy to get your printers back without having to reinstall them. In the /Previous Systems -> Previous System # -> private -> etc -> cups folder is the CUPS configuration data for printers you had set up prior to doing the Archive & Install. The important files are:

classes.conf   client.conf     cupsd.conf
ppds.dat       printers.conf   certs/*
interfaces/*   ppd/*
As root (or using sudo), copy or move those files from their current home to the /private/etc/cups folder. I recommend that you first rename the files in /private/etc/cups that would be overwritten by the files you're about to move in, just in case.

After copying or moving the files, you need to restart CUPS so that it will re-read its configuration files. Since I end up doing most things under OS X as I am accustomed to doing them on *BSD/Linux boxes, I do that by running the following as root:
/System/Library/StartupItems/PrintingServices/PrintingServices restart
Alternatively, you could run the following, again, as root:
SystemStarter restart PrintingServices
Your old printers should now work again...

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