Snow Leopard Shared Printer Job “On Hold: Authentication Required” fix

2009/11/1

I’ve had problems since installing snow leopard with sharing my printer with my wife’s macbook pro.

Whenever she’d try to print, the job would say “On Hold: Authentication Required”. After some fiddling around I found a solution:

  1. Go into System Preferences and go to the Print & Fax panel.
  2. Right click on the printer and choose “Reset Printing System…”. This will remove all of your printers.
  3. Hit the “+” and add the printer back, it should now be reset and have fixed whatever was fubar before.
  4. Click on the “Sharing Preferences” button (or go to the “Sharing” System Preference panel)
  5. Make sure that “Printer Sharing” is checked and that your printer’s name is also checked and that “Everyone” is set to “Can Print”
  6. On the remote machine you want to remove the printer and add it back in through the System Preferences Print & Fax panel

(This is on 10.6.1, not sure if this works in 10.6.0 (where I first had the problem), you should update to the latest).

After doing all that, I was able to print from my remote computers without any problems or any issues around authentication.

There are 51 comments in this article:

  1. 2009/11/23Rob say:

    Thank you! I was having the same problem today, and your instructions solved the problem.

  2. 2009/12/6mark say:

    THANK YOU!!!!!!

  3. 2009/12/8hari say:

    Thank you, the trick worked like a charm!!!!

  4. 2009/12/9Tyler say:

    Just tried this and it worked perfectly. Thank you.

  5. 2009/12/9Johnny say:

    Thank you. Been trying to figure this out for a long time, now I can print from all my Macs without disconnecting the external drive from the lone USB port to my time capsule.

  6. 2009/12/14Jose say:

    Thank you for the detailed info. Unfortunately it did not work for me. I have 2 imacs running leopard on a wired router sharing a printer and i keep getting the “on hold authentication required”

  7. 2009/12/14tednaleid say:

    @Jose, sorry this fix didn’t work for you. You might consider upgrading to Snow Leopard from Leopard. I had more luck on the latest version of the OSX than I did in 10.5.

  8. 2009/12/17Irvine say:

    This worked like a charm for me. Thank you!

  9. 2009/12/28Matt say:

    Seems to be broken again in 10.6.2

    Trying to print from a brand new Macbook (remote) to a brand new iMac (print server). No luck.

  10. 2010/01/9bruce say:

    After a whole morning of fiddling this seemed to do in on 10.6.2

  11. 2010/01/12Mat Walker say:

    Thanks for the tip. Works great for me now.

  12. 2010/01/17John say:

    Thanks, worked like a charm.

  13. 2010/01/24Zhenya say:

    Thanks! Worked great!

  14. 2010/02/3Ivan Cifuentes say:

    Thank you very much, this is the only good advice that i found on the web! Problem fixed. One problem left, can’ t print a month view from Entourage 2008. one down, one to go.

  15. 2010/02/6George Wallace say:

    Thanks – this didn’t work for me running 10.6.2

  16. 2010/02/11Paris say:

    Thanks Mate,
    Fixed… On 10.6.2
    Your the Best..
    Cheers

  17. 2010/02/13hugh say:

    this has bugged me for months, just got around to fixing it!
    Thanks a lot!

  18. 2010/02/15Jason say:

    Worked perfectly. Counter-intuitive but removing the printer on the host computer was the ultimate solve.

    I have a Samsung ML 1740 (6yrs old), a late 2007 iMac, and a late 2006 MBP

  19. 2010/02/20Stephen say:

    Hi Ted,
    This didn’t work for me running 10.6.2 with a 3 month old iMac sharing the ubs inkjet over airport to my wife’s MacBook. This only just started about 1 week(?) ago. B4 it was fine. The Apple store said today they had a similar problem but didn’t remember how they fixed it. Stay tuned, eh?
    Cheers.

  20. 2010/02/24Stuart say:

    Excellent. Thanks for the help. Will link back to it. Cheers,

  21. 2010/03/1Stephen again say:

    Hi Ted,
    To update my 2010/02/20 comment: Sharing is working now… I wasn’t really paying attention so it’s either because (in order) I went to System Preferences / Security / Firewall / (Click the lock…) Advanced… and clicked ”OK” (btw Firewall was set to ”Off” by default! I changed it to ”On”) or because I turned the printer power button off and then on again.
    Honestly! Can it be that simple? Why is it we can see a satellite photo of the other side of the planet in a second but we have to beat our brains out to share an inkjet 2 feet away??!!
    Hope this helps.
    Cheers.

  22. 2010/03/2tom wible say:

    i’ve got an hp g85 plugged into a linux box(fc12) and set it up for network sharing. on my g4 powerbook running 10.4.11, the printer shows up & works perfectly…on the wife’s g4 pb, nuthin’ but “Error while printing”:-(

    on my minimac running 10.6.2, printer sys.prefs showed nothing until i went into the cups admin & turned on cups in advanced->Show printers shared by other systems->Protocols: CUPS.

    only then did the printer show up, but when i printed to it, the job went on hold: authentication required.

    so got any client-side ideas?

  23. 2010/03/2tom wible say:

    nevermind: i’d forgotten to add the user to the printer on the server

  24. 2010/03/8Josh Pinter say:

    You are a god. Thank you for a solution and the brevity of said solution.

    Thanks!

    Josh

  25. 2010/03/10Pat say:

    Thanks! Worked on iMac running 10.6.2 and my Hackintosh running 10.5.7!

  26. 2010/03/11Keith - Dartmouth say:

    Thanks – after a couple of days trying all sorts of suggestions this worked for me. Thanks

    Keith

  27. 2010/03/16Gijs say:

    You’re the man! TNX!

  28. 2010/03/19Beef say:

    Thank you! This has been annoying me for ages!!!

  29. 2010/03/20Bob say:

    Thought I’d tried everything – until I saw this. Thank you so much. My wife is speaking to me again now that she can print things without me having to do it for her across the network!

  30. 2010/03/30Ian say:

    Excellent, thanks! perfect.

  31. 2010/03/30Mike say:

    I really appreciate you posting these instructions. Im back in business with printing. Im running 10.6.3 the latest update.

  32. 2010/04/10Patrick say:

    You rock. Thanks for the fix.

  33. 2010/04/13John Welch say:

    THANKS!!!!, spent almost an hour with Apple Care, and even they could not figure this one out.. Worked like a charm. YOU RULE!!!

  34. 2010/04/22Adam Billyard say:

    You are a star! I’ve faffed about for 2 hours with CUPS etc trying to fix this.

    Thank you

  35. 2010/05/3Jeremy Johnson say:

    This is great! We replaced our PC with with an I Mac and my macbook would no longer print to the network printer ( Now connected to the I Mac ) I screwed around with this for hours attempting to make it work. Did this and it works again……Now if someone could tell me how to use my western digital hard drive to work for my time machine through the network I would not have to keep moving it back and forth between the macbook and the I Mac.

  36. 2010/05/3Gordon say:

    great, worked for me – only thing I also reset the printing system on the remote mac to clear all – this was needed to make it burst into life!

    Thanks for the tip!

    Cheers

    Gordon

  37. 2010/05/4isd503 say:

    Thank you!!! This worked for me on 10.6.3. Very quick and easy fix!

  38. 2010/05/17John say:

    Thanks a million for your post. After a quick check with the local help menu (and no answer), I googled “authentication required to print” and you had the answer. It worked for me on 10.6.3. I deleted and added the printer in question on both macs. Immediate results!

  39. 2010/05/24Suzanne say:

    Whew, thanks for posting this! I didn’t realize there would be so many minor hiccups after upgrading to Snow Leopard but I appreciate your straightforward instructions.

  40. 2010/05/25chris say:

    OMG this was driving me crazy! Thanks so much!!! So easy once I came across you fix it instructions.

    Cheers!!

  41. 2010/05/31Keenan say:

    Thank you so much! You might want to post this on the apple support forums, they seem to be helpless over there.

  42. 2010/06/6Niyi say:

    I had this authentication problem myself and I was just thinking of giving Apple support a ring but then I thought I should try the internet. Following your steps I am now able to print.
    Thank you.

  43. 2010/06/9Joe say:

    This didn’t work for me on 10.6.3. Still can’t print.

  44. 2010/06/10Robert say:

    THANK YOU! You’ve just saved my life.

  45. 2010/06/22Lawrence say:

    This worked perfectly. Thanks!

  46. 2010/06/22joe cain say:

    thanks works on 10.6.4. fantastic

  47. 2010/06/23Lachlan McDonald say:

    We had a similar issue on two office computers running 10.6, except we encountered it after we updated the printer driver. Solution worked fine.

  48. 2010/07/10Jon Kingston say:

    Thanks a million! Had never seen this error before. Probably a Unix permissions issue?

  49. 2010/07/13Brian A. Frederick say:

    Thx – you made a rookie feel like a pro!!!!!

  50. 2010/07/16Paul Tedder say:

    Wonderful write-up. Worked perfectly! As a newbie with printing on OS X this was very helpful.

  51. 2010/07/28Joel say:

    Thank you! You might want to tell some that a right click is press-and-hold-control-key and then click the mouse while hovering over the printer icon.

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