[Samba] Printing errors

[David Nash]

Today is our first day 'live' with Samba!  We're having problems with
printing.  Samba is running on a SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 box, and the
printers are connected via Axis and HP JetDirect print servers.  The
Clients are Win XP Pro.  

 

When we configured the printers on the clients at the weekend, they
seemed to work fine - the printer drivers installed, and we were able to
print the Windows Test Page, as well as some documents.  Late last
night, we experienced our first problem.  When trying to print from one
PC, we received a Windows error message saying:

 

"Windows cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup.
Try one or more of the following:

Check the printer by printing a test page from Windows

Make sure the printer is turned on and online

Re-install the printer driver"

 

We didn't have much time to investigate, but we reloaded the Samba
daemons, and everything sprang into life.  I was nervous about this, and
sure enough, this morning a few users printed some documents, then
everyone started to get the same error message.  I restarted Samba and I
think one document was printed to one printer, and then the message
appeared again. 

 

I'm not sure how to track this down.  My SMB.CONF file has

 

[global]

printcap name = lpstat

printing = bsd

 

[printers]

comment = All printers

path = /var/spool/samba

browseable = no

valid users = @office root

writeable = no

printable = yes

print command = /usr/ucb/lpr -P %p -h -r %s

use client driver = yes

 

I've just sent a test print from my PC (where I'm logged on to the
domain as 'root') and it prints fine.

 

If I look in /var/spool/samba I can see the few jobs that the users have
successfully sent to the printers (The SCO version of lpr says it
doesn't support the '-r' switch to delete jobs).

 

I don't know whether it's an access rights issue, but there again, we
were able to print yesterday when logged on as a normal user (in the
'office' group).

 

I'm trying to look at the samba logs and the smbclient utility, but I'm
struggling with the best techniques to pin down this problem.

 

Hopefully someone can help!

 

Thanks

 

David