Introduction
Although quite rare in Germany, a few of our customers use MacBooks at home for the home office. Last week a customer created a ticket, that he couldn’t print on his home printer, although printer redirection was allowed for him in Citrix Studio. At first, I suggested the usual troubleshooting steps, like updating the Citrix Workspace app for Mac and checking the local preferences of the app. Obviously, both didn’t help. I then checked the problem myself and didn’t find an obvious problem. A quick search then led me to two Citrix KB articles, which revealed a knowledge gap on my side:
Client Printing from Linux/MAC is not available on Windows Server 2016 and 2019 (out of the box)
The following Citrix knowledge base articles explain what’s necessary to activate that feature:
- CTX283355: Client Printing from Linux/MAC is not working on Windows Server 2016 and 2019
- CTX140208: Citrix Workspace App for Mac and Linux fail to Redirect Local printer to Citrix Sessions
Summary of the knowledge base articles:
- Download the HP driver update for HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS driver from Microsoft Update Catalog.
- Inject the driver into the operating system.
- Add the printer driver to the printer driver store.
- The next time the user logs on, it will just work.
Adding it to your Citrix Master Image
At my company, we work with automated Citrix Master Images for Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS). The Master Images are installed by the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). We re-install the Master Images once a month. The real trick was to add these pre-requirements to our MDT task sequence.
Inject Driver
First, you have to get the required driver. Head over to Microsoft update catalog and search for HP LaserJet 2800. There are several search results, I decided on the following search result:
It has the id c29cfdf0-cb25-4251-a170-9b244a27d563, which is also mentioned in the first Citrix knowledge base article linked above.
You’ll receive a cab file. Extract it with a program like 7-Zip to receive the necessary content:
In the MDT Deployment Workbench, I created a new folder below Out-of-Box Drivers, which I called Printer Drivers:
In the folder start the Import Drivers wizard, to import the driver into the Deployment share:
The result should look like this:
Next, I created a Selection Profile below Advanced Configuration, so I can reference this exact folder during the MDT Task sequence:
And finally, the last step is to add an Inject Drivers step to your Task Sequence, to inject the driver into the Operating system:
After this, the driver will be part of the Operating system of the Master Image, but it will not be available as a printer driver, yet.
Install Printer Driver
The last step is to actually install the Printer Driver, so it becomes available for printers to be used. The driver has to be listed here, to be functionally available for the Citrix Printer Redirection:
Only one PowerShell command is required to achieve this, provided the driver has been properly injected into the operating system beforehand:
Add-PrinterDriver "HP Color LaserJet 2800 Series PS"Therefore we create a new MDT Application:
The application looks like this and the content of the ps1 file is the PowerShell command mentioned above:
The new application is then added to the Task sequence in the State Restore section:
Now we have everything in place we need.
Result
Now when I install a fresh Citrix MCS Master Image, the driver will be available and Citrix Printer Redirection for MacOS will work without problems:
That’s it! Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions.
