While running through the CUPS setup process for a single queue is simple, if you have a lab of Macs it’s not so much fun. I use a shell script to set up a queue, and this can then be turned into an Apple .pkg installer which you can deploy using Apple Remote Desktop, Munki, or whatever provisioning system you prefer.

I use a version of this script, with the following settings:

printername=”qub_staff_mono”
location=”Everywhere”
gui_display_name=”Queen’s MFD – mono”
address=”smb://staff-print2.ads.qub.ac.uk/Staff%20Mono”
driver_ppd=”/Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/Xerox WorkCentre 5845.gz”

This assumes I have already installed the Xerox drivers – munki takes care of this dependency for me.

Here are the scripts I use for both the mono and colour staff queues – you will have to edit  the driver names depending on which MFDs you have locally. Both scripts check for the Yosemite ‘Relax Sandbox’ issue as best they can. Provided the ‘mono’ script uses a mono device driver then it will always produce greyscale output, even if printed on a colour-capable machine.

I’m happy to discuss options for packaging this up with anyone who is interested!