Clean up "orphaned" printers - when printer alias change happens.

[wayneworkman]

Myself and others are of the opinion that deleting locally installed USB printers is a bad thing.

Maybe an extra option could be added to leave USB printers alone, or to simply default to not managing or touching USB printers when "Only Assigned Printers" is in use.

[mastacontrola]

As I understand at, this is the point of "FOG Managed Printers" option.

It will only deal with printers that are managed by fog, leaving anything else you have set in place.

[mastacontrola]

Only assigned is designed to remove everything and only allow the host to have "Only the assigned printers".

[wayneworkman]

The "FOG Managed Printers" leaves behind what I call "orphaned" printers. If a printer name is changed in FOG, the old printer is left behind and a new one made with the new name. We're looking for a way to clean this up, and would do "Only Assigned Printers" if it wouldn't blast our USB printers. If the FOG Client could remove orphaned names, that would be outstanding and would solve the problem.

[mastacontrola]

FOG Managed Printers will remove printers that are created in fog, but not associated to the host. If you're renaming printers (which I understand can happen), maybe just make a new entry in regards to the name and remove the old associations?

[wayneworkman]

Could the old alias be stored in the DB with the printer, in another field, and passed to the client? This way the client can remove the old alias? This "old" alias should probably be within the GUI too if implemented so it can be entered/changed manually or cleared.

[wayneworkman]

I updated the title of this to be more appropriate.

[wayneworkman]

Fog managed printers does not clean up orphaned fog printers that have been renamed, and fog only printers would blast local usb printers.

[Sebastian-Roth]

@wayneworkman As I am working on fog-client printing stuff right now I am wondering if this is still something you want us to look into. I read the whole lot and do understand your point. But I am still unsure how to solve this. Sure we could exclude local USB printers but then someone else comes along and wants another printer to not be touched. So my quick idea was to add another Printer Type, like "Alien/Alias Printer" which is simply a name of a printer which we don't touch on the client. What do you think?

[wayneworkman]

@Sebastian-Roth I think that would create a lot of unnecessary work for technicians - typing in exactly the printer to not touch - and a single typo wipes out the USB printer. A DB restore/snapshot restore for the FOG Server could also wipe out hundreds of USB printers. The thing is - USB printers are physically connected to the system. These printers can only belong to the connected system. And if a USB printer is connected to a local system, it ought to be available for use by that local system. Simply by being attached, the user/company is saying "This printer is to be used by this system". FOG should not be touching these USB printers for this reason. Sometimes these USB printers are tediously installed manually. I can attest to this, working in a high school with 500 desktop computers and each teacher buying some different printer with their classroom budget, I had to individually setup each one of those desktop printers every single summer with each printer's own unique drivers (because the custodians ripped apart the whole building every summer to wax the floors, and we imaged every computer every summer). The threat of FOG completely destroying all that manual work with the USB printers is something to be taken very seriously. No way was I ever turning on "Only assigned printers" in FOG because it'd delete every USB printer I tediously installed manually throughout the building. The feature - as is - is dangerous. The other mode for FOG Printers is "FOG Managed Printers" which I used, but the problem with that is it leaves behind orphaned printers on the remote hosts each time a printer name is changed in FOG - and this caused significant confusion with the teachers, having printers on their system that didn't work. It caused delays in printing, extra service tickets with technicians.

I'm not trying to be difficult. In fact, I don't even have skin in this game anymore, I've not used FOG at work for over two years. But lots of people still are, and I imagine lots of people are frustrated by the way fog handles printers. I am not saying I have the perfect answer, but it seems like a good step in the right direction is for FOG to not touch USB printers that are attached locally to a system.