[Unattended] Specifying Printers during Initial Dialog

[Tyler Hepworth]

Title: Message

Thank you for your excellent program.  It is truly a work of art and will make life easier once I have it customized for my site and get all the site specific configuration bugs worked out.

 

I wanted a way to specify printers during the initial dialog and have them installed as part of the process.  I made some modifications to install.pl and created a printers.pl script that I placed in the "site" folder to accomplish this task.  I keep a text file in "site" that contains a list of full unc paths to my various printers.  During the initial dialog, this list is pulled up and the printer install choices are displayed as a multi-choice dialog.  If any printers are selected, they are stuffed into a .vbs file that is run during postinst.bat.  The vbs file contains Windows Script Host code that installs the printers.

 

I would like to share my code in case any one else might find this to be useful.  Is there any reason that a generic printer dialog is not in the initial script?  Am I off base and missing some important point?  Would anyone else find this feature useful?

 

###########################

Changes made to Install.pl

###########################

 

Added the following lines to "sub create_postinst_bat ()".  The code is placed right after the section "# NTP servers"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Printers

if (-e "c:/netinst/printset.vbs") {
  push @postinst_lines, "call c:\\netinst\\printset.vbs";
 }

 

 

Added the following lines after "# Create C:\netinst and subdirectories." and before "# Create unattend.txt file." 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Call site-specific printer setup dialog.
my $print_conf = 'z:\\site\\printers.pl';

 

if (-e $print_conf) {
    my $pr_result = do $print_conf;
    $@
        and die "do $print_conf failed: $@";
    defined $pr_result
        or die "Could not do $print_conf: $^E";
}

 

 

Added the following lines so that a new option would be pushed into @edit_choices.  The code was placed after the push of "$doit" into @edit_choices.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my $printsetup = $u->{'_meta'}->{'printsetup'};
defined $printsetup
    and push (@edit_choices,
              "Edit $printsetup (will be run by $postinst)"
              => $printsetup);

 

 

 

###########################

Contents of printers.pl

###########################

 

sub create_print_setup () {
 my $netinst = 'c:\\netinst';
 my @print_lines;
 my $print_string = $u->{'_meta'}->{'printers'};
 my @printers = split /;/, $print_string if ($print_string);
 if (scalar @printers > 0) {
  push @print_lines,
  'Set WshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")';
  foreach (@printers) {
   push @print_lines, "WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection \"$_\"";
  }
 }
 if (scalar @print_lines > 0) {
 open (OUT, ">$netinst\\printset.vbs");
 print "Creating $netinst\\printset.vbs...";
  foreach (@print_lines) {
   print OUT "$_\n"
  }
  print "done.\n\n";
 }
 return 'c:\netinst\printset.vbs';
}

 

$u->comments ('_meta', 'printers') =
    ['Printers to be installed'];

 

$u->{'_meta'}->{'printers'} =
    sub {
     my $printers = "z:/site/printers.txt";
     my @print_array;
  if (-e $printers) {
      open (IN, "$printers") || warn "Could not open file: $!";
      while (<IN>) {
       chomp;
       push @print_array, $_;
      }
      close (IN);
        @selected_printers = multi_choice ('Choose printers to setup.',
                                      @print_array);
        return join ';', @selected_printers;
     }
 };

 

$u->{'_meta'}->{'printsetup'} = \&create_print_setup;

 

 

############################

Sample contents of printers.txt

############################

 

\\my_print_server\printer1

\\my_print_server\printer2

\\my_print_server\printer3

 

 

 

#######################

Notes

#######################

 

printers.pl and printers.txt both go in "install\site"

 

The local admin account on the client must have the same password as the local admin account on the print server or else the .vbs script will fail (won't be able to access the print server to setup the printer).

 

The printers must be setup on the print server such that they can be installed by just calling the full unc path to the printer from a command line or run dialog.

 

 

Again, I thank you for your time and hard work on this project.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tyler Hepworth

Computer Specialist

Nature's Sunshine Products