Upgrading the OS of your PaperCut Server

Upgrading the operating system under your PaperCut server can be a job — and because there are countless OS variants, it isn’t feasible to provide a universal step-by-step guide for every one. Instead, the guidance below emphasizes sound principles and offers helpful pointers for common server operating systems.

Keep in mind these best practices:

• Test first. Try the upgrade in a non-production environment to uncover any surprises ahead of time.
• Backup comprehensively. Ensure you have full, validated backups of your application data, configurations, and system files.
• Plan downtime. Schedule the work when service interruptions are acceptable, and communicate the maintenance window to affected users.

With those precautions in place, here are some tips that walk through upgrade considerations.

1. Make a backup

Whenever making any significant changes to your PaperCut server, it’s always a good idea to have a backup available just in case something goes awry. The best way to do this is to create a full-system backup using your organization’s preferred 3rd party backup software. Use that to save a snapshot that to include a file-system level backup of everything under your PaperCut installation directory (typically C:\Program Files\PaperCut NG/MF for Windows or /Applications/PaperCut NG/MF for macOS).If that’s not an option, you also can use PaperCut’s built-in backup system to make a quick copy of your database, which can be restored in the case of an emergency. If you are running the internal PaperCut database, our  backup article  - covers all the required steps to perform a database export of PaperCut as a contingency. If you are using an external Microsoft SQL Database, you can backup the database at the Microsoft SQL level.For Windows servers, we also recommend backing up your print queues too. You can get the low-down on that right  here .

2. Upgrade your OS

1. Perform your in-place upgrade as per instructions relevant to your individual server OS.
2. Confirm that the OS is working as expected post-upgrade and that you are still able to print to the existing print queues as normal.

Windows-specific notes: After completing your upgrade, there a couple of items worth noting, specifically for Windows Server systems:

• If you have enabled PrintService/Operational logs on your server, these will be removed upon upgrading. You can save these if you wish. Once the upgrade is complete, you can follow the steps  here  to re-enable logging.
• We recommend enforcing Client Side Rendering using the Set-Printer * -RenderingMode CSR PowerShell command. This will ensure that Windows client machines are in the correct state post-upgrade since the client will honor the server setting. We also mention this method in our  Client-Side Rendering article .

macOS-specific notes: After completing your upgrade, there a couple of items worth noting, specifically for macOS Server systems:

• If you’re seeing printers getting paused or print jobs not getting logged, there may have been a CUPS upgrade as part of the OS upgrade. Some of the CUPS config files will get re-written as part of this. Symptoms of the issue include filter errors appearing in the Print queue window on the Mac, and the print queues will go into a paused state. To resolve this, re-run the Control Printer Monitoring.command discussed on Add and remove/delete/ignore printers which will ask you if you want to update your CUPS sandboxing settings. Type ‘y’ and Enter. Once this is done, printing should work again.

3. Re-install PaperCut

Then, without restarting the server, perform an over-the-top installation of PaperCut using the same version of your original installer file. This is also a good time to update the drivers for your print queues to ensure that there aren’t any unintended implications with using the old versions. If it’s been a good while between installations, you can follow along with our quick install guides.

4. Test

Confirm that PaperCut is running, your settings and job logs are visible, and if you are running PaperCut MF, that your devices have reconnected successfully. See our  post upgrade article  for a checklist.

In the event that PaperCut no longer functions correctly post-upgrade, we suggest completely uninstalling PaperCut from the server and then reinstalling it from scratch.  Restoring your database  should bring everything back successfully.