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I'm in the midst of an active-directory forest migration at the moment, and in addition to that, the powers that be have decided to start on an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 for our client PCs. This has left me with something of a problem around printers, in that our clients are on the old forest and domain, and our print servers are on the new one. I've set up the permissions fine so that everyone can access, map and print to the printers they require, but they're used to having printers in the ADDS printer directory, and of course, listing the printers in the directory from the print servers in the new domain/forest does not list them in the old domain/forest.

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So, given that our users are... resistant... to change, does anyone know of a way to do a cross-forest search of the ADDS printer directory, so that the users can see what they expect to see, and what we want to show them in terms of printers in the ADDS printer directory search dialogue? (Pictured below.)

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All I've been able to find on this, so far, is a fairly useless Technet article that recommends the use of "Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003" server to synchronize that data between forests, and I'm kind of doubtful that it will work with a Server 2008 R2 FL forest/domain running Server 2012 R2 domain controls (in addition to preferring a solution which doesn't involve whole new systems to manage and license, for a simple list of damn printers).

It is possible for a user to configure a computer to use a particular printer by specifying the printer name, which requires no additional configuration on the part of the forest administrator. However, if you want to enable users in one forest to browse for printers in a different forest, then consider using Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 to synchronize printer data between the forests, as described in “Retrieving Application Data Across Forests” earlier in this document.

HopelessN00b
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  • I would comment on the fact that you're using XP **still**, but I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of issues migrating to 7/8 – Jacob Apr 09 '14 at 16:17
  • @Jacob I doubt that. Corporate users seems to be taking the *skip-Windows-8* approach, as they did with Vista. Maybe the Windows 7 -> Windows 9 migration will be a headache, though. – HopelessN00b Apr 09 '14 at 16:19

1 Answers1

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You should be able to use the pubprn.vbs script to publish printer objects manually.

You could get the list of printers to publish by querying Active Directory (the csvde -f printers.csv -r "(objectClass=printQueue)" command would locate all printQueue objects in the domain its run against and output them into a file. After that it would be a matter of parsing the output into command lines for pubprn.vbs.

Keeping the list up, long-term, might be problematic if it changes frequently.

Evan Anderson
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  • Oh, I could kiss you... gonna check this out tomorrow, but this is *such* a relief. – HopelessN00b Apr 10 '14 at 00:16
  • Follow up question... do you know which container I'm supposed to publish these printers into? I assume that if I'm publishing printers for site [blah], I should publish them into `LDAP://CN=[blah],DC=[domain],DC=[tld]`, or maybe even the root `LDAP://DC=[domain],DC=[tld]` if I want all users to see that site's printers for some reason, but am not exactly certain. Do I have that right? – HopelessN00b Apr 10 '14 at 12:50
  • AFAIK the default search is scoped at the root of the directory and is a subtree search. You should be able to put them virtually anywhere in the destination domain. I'd probably make an OU off the root of the directory for foreign printers, publish one there, and see if the search functionality on the client works as-expected. – Evan Anderson Apr 10 '14 at 12:55
  • It works! **IT WORKS!!** ***IT WOOOOOOOOORKS!!!*** Next time you find yourself in our state's capital, feel free to hit me up for a free drink or 12. – HopelessN00b Apr 10 '14 at 13:45
  • Oh, that's right-- you're in C'Bus. My wife is heading over there this morning to see a friend... >smile< I gotta stay home and play Server Fa-- erm-- work. I gotta work. – Evan Anderson Apr 10 '14 at 13:58