Update 27.11.: We now have the migration dates and final printer list here

As you might have read elsewhere, ETH will consolidate its printer fleet for cost cutting reasons. Even though at D-PHYS we already have a very efficient printing landscape, ID will enforce a uniform 30% cut across the board. We have tried to limit the impact as much as possible and still ensure a fair and even printer distribution throughout D-PHYS, but the implications will be felt by everyone.

• 30% of all existing printers in D-PHYS will be dismantled.
• All remaining printers will be replaced with HP hardware.
• All those will get new generic queue names (like p-hil-hp002) that bear no indication as to the printer's location in the building.
• Everybody will have to reinstall all printers they'd like to use in the future.
  • on managed workstations we will prepare this as much as possible.
  • on self-managed machines you'll have to follow our instructions.
• This might be the perfect opportunity to switch over to the universal card-ethz queue that will let you forget about queue names (you can do that already now).
• We understand that for some of you this change will significantly affect your daily work. We urge you to PLEASE not try to solve the problem by buying your own printer. Instead, please get in touch with me (Christian Herzog) so that I can collect your complaints and forward them to the person responsible for this change.

The whole process is supposed to happen in December and will be rolled out building by building. We're posting this already now as individual printers in D-PHYS have already been replaced.

We will update this post with updates as they become available.

Together with our colleagues at Informatikdienste we have adopted the new ETH printing system in our department. Read about the many advantages of the project in our documentation. On October 15 we have migrated the first Institute (ITP) where people now can benefit from various features like pull printing and automatic toner supply.

So who's next to join us? We have printers in stock, so if your group is interested, we can accommodate you on very short notice. Just get in contact.

Historically the D-PHYS print server has been accessible under the host name printer.ethz.ch. As it turns out, this name violates ID's DNS rules and they have requested we change it. We therefore have modified all references pointing to printer.ethz.ch to now address printer.phys.ethz.ch. We have incorporated some technical solutions that redirect many connections automatically, and also our managed workstations have been migrated, but there might be individual configurations that need manual intervention. So if printing stops working after Wednesday evening, you might have to change the print server address -- see our printing documentation.
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Until now it was not possible to print on D-PHYS printers while you're on the road with mobile devices. Since several people expressed their interest in such a possibility, we have created two methods that allow you to do just that: read more.
As there's no common standard for mobile printing, certain restrictions apply. If you find yourself with an email that you think should print but doesn't, please let us know.

We developed a real-time monitoring of the number of pages printed in physics department. We keep track of the printed pages on each printer and the total for our two servers (cups and winprinter). The results are plotted on our printer homepage printer.ethz.ch. Clicking on the upper graph shows you more details, as well as the statistics over the last 30days. Moreover you can click on the little "Stats" icon next to each printer, to see its individual statistics.

These statistics not only help us to monitor and debug our printers, but should also make everyone aware of the large amount of pages printed in D-Phys, namely that more than 5000 pages are printed every single workday.

Please be eco-friendly and print only when you need to.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, we would like to give a status update after the print server migration. Somewhat contrary to popular belief, the overall situation with printing has improved quite a lot. Most combinations of operating systems, client programs, file formats and printers work very well, with two notable exceptions:

• Mac OS X 10.6.7: printing some PDFs from non-Adobe programs on some printers fails. We're working on a solution. Either use Adobe Reader/Acrobat or print on any other printer. This problem is introduced with the 10.6.7 update. You'll have to use the Acroread workaround until we find a solution.  SOLVED: Apple released an official patch to fix the problems with fonts. Please update your computer.
• Macs: the LPD way of printing (readme) currently does not work. Again, we're working on it. Use CUPS in the meantime. SOLVED

As a reminder, please let us know immediately if apart from the above-mentioned cases you still experience printing issues.

We know printing is not always fun, and we hear your complaints. During the past few months we have been busy setting up a new print server that should solve most of today's problems (hopefully). We will deploy the new system on

Monday, April 4, at 07:30

The only change for you should be faster and more reliable printing. If you do experience any problems when printing, please let us know immediately so we can fix it.

Update 08:45 DNS confusion about old/new print server, we'll have to wait for the DNS cache to flush

Update April 5, 16:10 migration is done

Printing currently doesn't work on most Macs. We're still trying to find the source of the problem.