[Samba] Win2K Printer Driver Problems - Hi Jerry!!

[SMITH Gregory C.]

Nope, close but no cigar.

With 2.2.6Pre2 Word started to behave itself but Outlook acts as though
landscape is a foreign concept(i.e everything prints portrait regardless of
page setup). Spoolsv also crashes on the Win2K workstations requiring a
manual restart of the spooler service.  We will downgrade to 2.2.5 and try
Jerry's patch.

In another message Jerry talks about "running" the driver on the server to
set DevMode, etc.  I assume we've been doing what's needed although I
haven't seen anything laid out in a step-by-step fashion, so to confirm:

1. Define your printer as a share or in CUPS as needed.
2. Define PRINT$ share with only admin users having write access.
3. Restart Samba and make sure printer appears in the server Printers folder
4. Right-click on the printer in question and choose Properties.
5. Respond "NO" to the "Install Driver now prompt"  - Question:  Why respond
"No" at this point? All docs say to do so without explanation.
6. Once in the driver dialog go to the Advanced Tab and click on "New
Driver"
7. Select your driver from wherever and make sure it copies to
\\Server\PRINT$\W32X86\...
8. Click on Apply to make sure dialog gets updated with printer-specific
configuration tabs.
9. On General tab, choose Printing Preferences - Basics and switch page
layouts between portrait and landscape clicking OK in between to update the
driver.  - I assume at this point the driver Devmode is being set, correct?
10.  The printer is now ready to install on Workstations.

General Questions:
1. If the printer was already installed on a workstation and the driver is
re-installed should the user re-install the printer?

2. What could cause the spooler to crash so often when updating drivers?

3. When a driver is changed or updated on the server I see many (sometimes
up to 15) print events in the workstation system event log noting drivers
being updated but listing the same drivers each time.  Normal?

4. The ability to delete drivers, forms, etc from Server Properties in a
server's Printers folder is disabled on a Samba server.  Is this an
interface that hasn't been implemented yet?

5. Many problems seem to occur when the server has multiple versions of
different printer model drivers installed.  Should this make any difference?

6. Related to #4, Cleaning out the Samba-side printer driver environment
seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition.  I.e. You have to stop Samba,
delete nt*.tdb and everything under W32X86.  Is there a better way?

This weekend we will be moving servers around and will set the printing
environment based upon whether I can get these problems resolved.  If not
I'll have to either install all printers as local using rundll32 or have
printing handled by a Win2K server.

Thanks.

Greg



-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Bartlett [mailto:abartlet at samba.org]
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 4:03 AM
To: SMITH Gregory C.
Cc: 'samba at lists.samba.org'
Subject: Re: [Samba] Win2K Printer Driver Problems - Landscape margins
off, no collating.


"SMITH Gregory C." wrote:
> 
> Our environment:
> 
> Samba 2.2.5 on RedHat 7.2  (Tried on two different servers)
> Printing handled by Cups 1.1.14-15

For printing, try jerry's post-2.2.5 printing patch, or Samba
2.2.6pre2.  This is exactly the kind of issue that he and the rest of
the HP folk have been working on.

If not, I'm sure he will be very glad to figure out what's going on :-).

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net