Capturing a Mac Spool File

Sometimes when troubleshooting issues PaperCut Support may ask you to pause a macOS print queue to make a copy of the spool files used for printing. This can help us diagnose issues related to print analysis and other problems.

This method involves running Terminal commands on the system hosting your print queues (i.e. the print server) to gather up required files.

To collect spool files from a macOS system running PaperCut:

1. Enable snapshot-level debugging for the Print Provider. Using Finder, navigate to/Applications/PaperCut MF/providers/print/mac then run the script debug-snapshot-enable.command and follow the prompts in the Terminal window.
   
   An alternative method is to navigate to the same directory, and open print-provider.conf using an app like TextEdit to add the line debug=snapshot.
2. Temporarily turn off the printer or disconnect it from the network so that jobs are held in the queue.
3. Next, reproduce the problem by printing submitting a print job that reproduces the issue. (If macOS prompts you with a choice of “Cancel”, “Add to Printer” or “Resume” select “Add to Printer”).
4. Open the Terminal.
5. Copy /private/var/spool/cups folder to Downloads:
   sudo cp -r /private/var/spool/cups /Users/<username>/Downloads
6. Set 755 permissions to the copied folder:
   sudo chmod -R 755 /Users/<username>/Downloads/cups
7. Inside this folder look for any files that start with the letter “d”, for example d00077–001. These are spool files.
8. Control-click on those files and choose Compress.
9. Share the newly Archive.zip file with your PaperCut support contact. Make sure you include the following details:
   • the number of pages
   • the paper size
   • other attributes such as grayscale, copies, etc.

Related Articles

• Troubleshooting page count and color detection issues
• Capturing a Windows Spool File
• Capturing a Linux Spool File
• Capturing a Novell Spool file
• Capturing Spool Files with Mobility Print

Analyze your spool file

Curious to find out how PaperCut interprets that print job? Now that you’ve collected your spool file you can head over to our Spool File Analysis page to get the results yourself, and even compare how different versions of PaperCut stack up.

Need a hand?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood, and we’re happy to help out when needed. Contact your PaperCut Authorized Solutions Center or head over to Support Portal for further assistance.