Printing from a personal computer

Find the name of the public printer you wish to use, and then follow one of these instructions depending on your operating system. (Printing is only allowed when connected to the CIMS network or NYU Wireless, specifically the nyu or nyu-legacy SSIDs. Printing WILL NOT WORK from eduroam or nyuguest wifi.)

 

Windows (32/64bit)

Note: Windows computers need Microsoft File and Printer Sharing installed.

Installing a Printer

  1. Select the "Start Menu".
  2. Select the "My Computer" icon.
  3. In the "My Computer" window, select the "Address bar" and enter: \\printserver.cims.nyu.edu
  4. If your machine is not part of the CIMS domain network, then you may be prompted for your CIMS account information. At the login prompt, you must preceed your CIMS username with the text "CIMSSAM\". For example, if your username was johndoe you would enter CIMSSAM\johndoe.
  5. Double click the name of the public printer you want to print with.
  6. When the print queue window for this printer shows up, the printer should be installed.

After installing your printer, you can print as normal by selecting the newly installed printer from the list of printers (the name of the printer will be prefixed with \\printserver.cims.nyu.edu.)

When adding network printers on Windows, an error occurs while connecting to the printer (Operation failed with error 0x000006d1). Before installing the printer, there is a registry file (right click and click "save link as") that can be downloaded and run to fix the issue. A reboot may be necessary after the registry file has been run.

For SURFACE PROS: 

  1. Windows key + R
  2. Type "regedit" 
  3. File > Import > <PATH TO THE ABOVE DOWNLOADED REGISTRY FILE>
  4. Restart your computer

    DISCLAIMER: This .reg file is from an outside source. For more information google "ForceCSREMFDespooling".

macOS (10.15 or higher)

Installing a Printer

  1. Select the Apple menu in the top-left corner of your screen.
  2. Select the "System Preferences" option.
  3. Select the "Printers & Scanners" icon
  4. Click the "+" to Add a printer.
  5. Right-click in the empty space of task bar (top, grey area), select "Customize Toolbar.."
  6. Add the "Advanced" icon by dragging it to the task bar.
  7. Under the "Advanced" tab, select Type: "Windows printer via spools".
  8. Leave "Device" as the default "Another Device"
  9. URI: smb://printserver.cims.nyu.edu/MY_PRINTER?encryption=no (in place of "MY_PRINTER," substitute the name of the printer you want to use, e.g. bwpr25). 
  10. Change the name to the name of the printer you're using (e.g. bwpr25). The location is optional.
  11. For the "Use:" option, select "Generic PostScript Printer", and then click "Add".
  12. Check "Duplex Printing Unit" if you are presented with the option, and then press OK.
  13. The printer you added should now be in the list of printers.
  14. When first printing to this printer, you may be prompted to enter a username & password. If the print queue says "Authorization required" for your print job, right click on the print job to enter your credentials. For your username, please preface it with "CIMSSAM\" E.G. Username: CIMSSAM\your_CIMS_username (and) Password: your_CIMS_password. Please be sure to add the username & password to the "keychain." If the job is put on hold due to an authentication error, please resume the job and/or the printer to prompt the submission of your credentials.
  15. If you cannot authenticate by right clicking on the print job, you can do it manually. Do this by opening Finder, then go to the toolbar on the top of the screen, and find the "Go" menu. At the bottom of this menu is an option "Connect to Server", where you can input the URL from line 9 and connect, where it will prompt you to give your username and password.
  16. If you are still unable to authenticate using this method, you also many need to delete certificates from previous attempts to authenticate. Do this by opening the application Keychain Access (the easiest way to find is by using the "Search" function by clicking on the magnifying glass on the top right of the tool bar). Once the app is opened, click on Certificates and delete anything related to NYU or Printserver, along with any passwords for printers in the Passwords pane. This should be a last resort if the previous steps do not allow you to print.

After installing your printer, you can print as normal by selecting the newly installed printer from the list of printers. If the printer does not print, try pausing & restarting it. Note that you must enter your CIMS username and password, instead of the default, which would be the local password. Jobs may be put on hold until the correct login info is given. If this happens, click on the printer icon and then "resume" to re-enter your info.

 

Linux

Installing a Printer

Find the name of the public printer you wish to use, and then follow these instructions.

If the printer doesn't show up automatically, make sure that "Browsing" is turned on in cups. You can do that by pointing your browser to the cups adminstration page. Make sure that "Browsing" or "Show printers shared by other systems" is turned on. Browse Samba/Windows printers by selecting Windows Printer via SAMBA. Specify the URI of the printer as in smb://printserver.cims.nyu.edu/PRINTER (where PRINTER is the name of the printer from Location of Public Printers). If your machine is not part of the CIMS domain network, then you may be prompted for your CIMS account information. At the login prompt, you must preceed your CIMS username with the text "CIMSSAM\". For example, if your username was johndoe you would enter CIMSSAM\johndoe.

After installing your printer, you can print as normal by selecting the newly installed printer from the list of printers. If these instructions don't work, see advanced settings below.

 

Advanced Linux Settings

In the past there have been various issues with printing from personal Linux computers. The issue regards CUPS using the user's computer username to print instead of their CIMS ID. This fix allows users to both not have to specify their usernames when printing using lpr and be able to print from GUI applications. This fix has been tested on and is working on some versions of Ubunutu and Mint. Generic instructions are below.

Changing Your Printing Username

  1. Go to the command line and use your favorite editor to open your .bashrc file, for example: vim ~/.bashrc.
  2. Add the following line somewhere in your .bashrc file where <USERNAME> is your Courant username: export CUPS_USER='<USERNAME>'.
  3. Save and exit. Now use your favorite editor to open your CUPS client configuration file: vim ~/.cups/client.conf.
  4. There may be a line in there that says User <LOCAL_USERNAME>, where <LOCAL_USERNAME> is the username on your desktop. Change the line to read User CIMSSAM\<USERNAME> where <USERNAME> is your Courant username.
  5. Save and exit. Now do the same thing for the following file, if it exists: vim /etc/cups/client.conf.
  6. In the event one or neither of these two files exist, do the following:
    1. Create client.conf in /etc/cups
    2. Create client.conf in ~/.cups (if the directory isn't there just create it. The "." in front of cups is important.)
    3. Return to step 3 and proceed from there.
  7. Save, exit, and reboot your desktop.

Adding Printers

  1. Go to System Settings -> Printers
  2. Click "Add" to add a printer, and then choose Network Printer > Find Network Printer. For the host, type "printserver.cims.nyu.edu" and then click 'Find'.
  3. You should see something like "ipp://.." appear. You may also notice a list of printers appearing.
  4. Your printer is probably somewhere in there, but you can change the last part of the URI to be your printer because that's easier than looking through the list. In this case, I wanted to print to "bwpr51".
  5. At the next window, you can fill in applicable information (name, description, location) on the printer. Click 'Apply' and your printer will be added.

Adding Printers With Ubuntu

Before you can install the printer drivers, you will have to install both a SAMBA client and Python3 software. NOTE: Installing the printer drivers will NOT work if you do not install these two software packages first.

Installing the SAMBA client:

  1. Open a terminal page and run the command: sudo apt-get install samba samba-common

Installing the Python3 software:

  1. Open a terminal page and run the command: sudo apt install python3-smbc

Now you can install the printer drivers using the following steps:

  1. Go to Settings -> Printers.
  2. Scroll down and go to the "Advanced Printer Settings" page.
  3. Click "Add" in the top left corner.
  4. Scroll to click "Network Printer" in the left sidebar, then under that click the "Windows SAMBA" option.
  5. In the box next to "smb://"  at the top of the page type "printserver.cims.nyu.edu/PRINTER_NAME".
  6. Check the box "Set Authentication Credentials" (It is under the box that is pre-checked). Enter your CIMS credentials and click "Verify".
  7. Click the "Forward" button in the bottom right corner.
  8. In the dropdown menu on the following page select "Generic". Then select "PostScript Printer" in the dropdown menu that follows.
  9. In the righthand dropdown menu select the bottom option "Generic PostScript Printer [en]".
  10. It will begin to search for the printer drivers. If this process is successful, it will offer you the option to print a test page. If your test page prints to the correct printer, you have finished adding the printer

Special Note

There is a known error in Ubuntu 16.04 that produces the following error:

Idle - Tree connect failed (NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED)

You may be able to fix it by editing the file /etc/samba/smb.conf to read as follows:

[global]
client use spnego = yes
workgroup = CIMSSAM