Ramblings o' Techie: lpadmin error when trying to print in OS X 10.5

Monday, July 13, 2009

lpadmin error when trying to print in OS X 10.5

This is a known issue in OS X 10.5.7, and Apple has a support article with the supposed workaround. Trying to login as the lpadmin fails, and I'm sure if you found this article you're frustrated with trying to figure out which password you should be using. The trick is to upgrade the lpadmin group to support GUID membership. To do that, you can use a terminal command while logged in as a local administrator.

1. Go to Applications->Utilities->Terminal

2. Enter the command dseditgroup -o edit -p -a admin -t group _lpadmin and then press Enter

3. You should get a response saying _lpadmin has been upgraded to support GUID membership.

Try printing now and it should be fine. To see the Apple support page, check article TS2754

PS - I have seen this only act as a temporary fix on a few Macs that I have setup to connect to Active Directory. I'm not sure why, so if you run across this and can explain why this works for some AD Macs but not all (as a permanent fix), please leave a comment. Thanks!

2 comments:

David said...: Thanks. This solved my printing problem and saved a lot of time. Your step 2 was more accurate than the Apple page, which was missing a space between "-a" and "admin" in the command. I didn't get the response saying I'd been upgraded to support GUID membership, but it fixed the problem anyway.; March 6, 2011 at 10:09 PM
Anonymous said...: This solved my problem - thanks so much! Like David said, I didn't get the response. Terminal just asked for a password, which doesn't appear on the screen and doesn't seem to work, but anyway, I can print from my Canon MP 495.; May 10, 2012 at 8:42 PM