OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

Mountain Lion’s Print Management Software

OS X provides two choices of software that you can use to start and manage network printer sharing. The simpler and easier of the two is System Preferences, and it may be all that you need. System Preferences is the first place you’ll go to turn on print sharing. The more powerful choice is the web interface to the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS). You can use either or both.

You can share printers connected to the Mac, or you can share network printers. For the latter, the print queue must be hosted on the server rather than the printer. Although System Preferences has limited capabilities, you can use it to restrict print sharing to certain users or groups in the network directory. You can also use Workgroup Manager to further limit which users and groups can access specific printers. Workgroup Manager is a separate download available at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1567.

Looking at System Preferences for printer sharing

System Preferences, which is the equivalent of the Control Panel in Windows, is on the Dock by default and also accessible from the Apple menu. Found on all Macs — clients and servers — System Preferences generally is the place for user settings on a local Mac.

To set up printer sharing, you access two areas: the Sharing pane and the Print & Scan pane, as shown in Figure 9-1. I have more on System Preferences later ...