Samba and printers.

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Monday 04 August 2003 3:22 pm, Chris Wagner wrote:

> Can someone point me to a good reference for setting up Windows printers
> with  Samba so that they can be shared with a Linux box?

Your Samba client should be able to see any correctly shared printer in your 
network, provided that you have the Windows security and Samba working 
together.

I posted the one-line command to add a printer on an NT PDC to CUPS recently, 
I'm afraid it's not on the local system, but you should be able to search for 
it in the archives.

How are the Windows machines networked?  Are they a part of an NT workgroup, 
with a Windows PDC providing security?  What WIndows account are you using to 
connect to the printer?

> I have installed the samba server and client from RPM and I have no idea
> how  to even launch the client (if it's a GUI client of any sort) and try to
> browse the windows network.

# smbclient -L will list your local resources.  You need to read the 
documention on the smb.conf configuration, and possibly the man page on 
smbclient.

There are GUI interfaces for this, but they seems to depend on having 
everything working perfectly, and in a certain expected configuration, before 
they'll show you anything.  You're better off with command line utilities for 
most stuff.

I would recommend that you install Samba Swat though - it does make hacking 
your way through the config file a lot easier, with linked references to 
relevant documentation.  One great thing that samba provides is the testparms 
command that will parse your config file and tell you what it thinks it says, 
as well as locating any errors.  I don't think that's integrated in Swat yet, 
so run it from command line.

CUPS is really just a common interface that pulls all the lpd and filters and 
network sharing controls together into a common, central configuration.  I 
would work to understand it and get it working, rather than trying to work 
with the individual lower-level components.  I know this is counter to my 
usual advice to start with the low-level basics, but in this case it can be 
good.  Working out autofilter on your own is not recommended, expecially as 
CUPS can get it right with a click.

If I can reach the old home network I'll re-post that command, but I think I 
got it off of the CUPS web site.