printing through a workstation

[Stephen L Arnold]

When the world was young, Brian Servis <servis at purdue.edu> carved 
some runes like this:  

> *- On  6 May, robert wrote about "printing through a workstation"
>
> > hello, Is there a way to get samba to allow you to print from the unix
> > side of the fence to a shared printer on a win95 workstation? This would
> > be very useful for faxing etc... any suggestions?? thanks Robert
> > 
> 
> Look for the smbprint script that is part of the examples section in
> the source, In the Debian GNU/Linux distro it is contained in the
> samba-doc package.  It has info on setting up a unix print filter to
> send to a windows shared printer.  I have never used it, but the info is
> there.

With redhat it's even easier (not sure about other distributions or 
unix flavors) - just use the printtool widget under X and specify 
SMB network printer.  It uses the standard redhat print filters 
(nenscript and ghostscript) and the following basic samba settings:

in the global section:
   printcap name = /etc/printcap
   load printers = yes
(printing style is not specified)

the printer share definition:
[printers]
   comment = All Printers
   path = /var/spool/samba
   browseable = no
# Set public = yes to allow user 'guest account' to print
   guest ok = no
   writable = no
   printable = yes

It seems to work fine, ie, even though the printers are hanging on 
a win95 print server, I can even print through the samba print 
shares from another win95 client (as well as direct from win95 and 
from the linux side).  The linux printing HOWTOs can be helpful 
(even if you're running a commercial unix flavor).  Also, lprng is 
supposed to be pretty slick too (check the docs for more info).

Don't forget, you can always look at the source code too...
****************************************************************
Stephen L. Arnold                        Senior Systems Engineer
ENSCO Inc.                        email:  arnold.steve at ensco.com
P.O. Box 5488                         www:  http://www.ensco.com
Vandenberg AFB, CA  93437                    voice: 805.606.8838
                                               fax: 805.734.4779
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
****************************************************************