Can we know if a printer is not connected ?

Question

Hi,

I am working for a company that want to install ocs inventory to keep tract of all the printers connected and not connected to the network. It's been a few days that I am on this project and, I am kind of blocked.

I have installed an ocs agent on my computer and when I plug in a printer, I see that it appared on the printers list but when I plug out the printer, it's still appeared on the printers list, even when I update the inventory.

Does somebody know what is the problem ? Is it maybe impossible to know if a printer is not connected to the network or to a specific computer with ocs inventory ?

Answer 1

OCS Inventory NG is not a solution for supervision (like Nagios, Zabbix, ...).

The best is to use network connected printer : they have an ip address, so a simple ping give an answer (and if they support SNMP, it's possible to retrieve lot of informations like page count, ...). It's easy with Nagios or Zabbix to get informations.

For USB printer, they depend of the computer and they could appears in printers list even disconnected : maybe asking Windows with scripts ?

Answer 2

Hi, 

Thank you for you answer. 

I didn't specify but my problem happens when I use a USB printer. 

What did you mean by "For USB printer, they depend of the computer..." ? Can you be more specific about the part where I can ask Windows with scripts ?

Answer 3

On a Windows computer, you may have a USB printer and you can share it with colleagues.

About sharing, it's not very efficient because the computer need to be on !

About status, Windows scan each definition to verify availability of a printer (USB or connected). So I suppose it's possible to 'ask' Windows about status printer ... but I don't know how !

(Powershell : 'Get-Printer | Format-table' give the list but not the status ...)

Answer 4

Thank you for the solution.

Actually, I did some research and I found that it's possible to install a plugin on ocs inventory Agent Windows. it's name "listprinters.vbs" and it can make the inventory of all printers even for USB printer.

I tried this method but I have a problem, I can't seem to change the status of the plugin. It keeps saying "WAITING NOTIFICATION" Here is the screenshot :

I use this documentation to help me : https://wiki.ocsinventory-ng.org/05.Deployment/Deploying-packages-or-executing-commands-on-client-hosts/

Do you know something about it ? How can I change the status and active the plugin ?