[Samba] Windows XP SP2 slow printing solution

[Jason Balicki]

Walter Willmertinger <> wrote:
> I upgraded to 3.0.8 with no difference in the speed of the printer
> dialogue and other printer related topics.
> It is still very, very slow. For example, Adobe 6.0 takes about 10
> seconds to show the printer dialogue.
> 
> So it seems, that the problem is not fixed.
> I sure think it is a problem in SP2, because I removed already SP2 and
> all works in normal speed.
> The problem is that you cannot go around SP2 only if you ignore any MS
> XP updates.

For what it's worth, I've had this same issue and I've been
met with silence as well.  Also, 10 seconds is child's play,
I'd have considered that GOOD.  :)  I was waiting for 30 seconds
or more for print related dialogs to pop up.

Here's what I've learned:

1) It's NOT universal, and only appears to affect certain printers/
print drivers.  I have Canon ImageRunners that have this problem,
but I have several HP printers and a Ricoh color laser that doesn't.
The Canon printers have the problem no matter what driver I attempt
to print with (they support PCL and PostScript.)  I've tried every
version of both languages that I could get my hands on.

2) It IS an issue with Windows XP SP 2 and Samba.  If I change
either of those, i.e., uninstall SP2 or share the printer on another
Windows machine (or use a print method other than smb) the problem 
goes away.

3) You can work around the problem by printing to CUPS/IPP directly.
When setting up the printer select "network" printer and then select
the "connect to a printer on the Internet..." radio button.  Then
you can use the url "http://<servername>:631/printers/printername"
to connect to your printer.  This has the distinct drawback of
not being able to automatically load printer drivers.  Of course,
you also must be running CUPS as your print backend.  Also, I
don't know if you can do this with Windows 9x clients, but you
shouldn't be running those any more, and you don't have the
slow print problem with 9x anyway. :)  By using IPP, I've decreased
the amount of wait time to near zero.  Print related dialogs
are near instant at this point.

Disclaimer:  I have yet to upgrade to 3.0.8 on my production server,
I am still at 3.0.7.  However, I've set up a test box with
3.0.8 and I have the same issues.

HTH,

--J(K)

> 
> Bret Jordan schrieb:
> 
>> Also if your printers are in a different VLAN check your firewall
>> rules and or router ACLs to make sure the CUPs/Samba server can talk
>> about to the clients correctly.  When you do a packet capture you
>> will see what I am talking about. 
>> 
>> Bret
>> 
>> Darrin Yeager wrote:
>> 
>>>> On the printer server, we are running samba 3.0.1, and on the WINS
>>>> server we are running an older version, 2.2.5.
>>>> Recently, some of our computers were upgraded to XP SP2. After the
>>>> upgrade, accessing the samba shared printers from the XP machines
>>>> was incredibly slow. It would take tens of seconds to even bring
>>>> up the printer status window, and printing from acrobat could take
>>>> several minutes.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> You'll have to upgrade the 3.0.1 box -  MS introduced a bug in XP
>>> SP2 for printing which samba fixed in the later versions (> 3.0.5 I
>>> believe). 
>>> 
>>> Look at the release notes for the latest samba version and search
>>> for "SP2" and you'll see the problem.
>>> 
>>> http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.0.8.html
>> 
>> 
> 
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> 
> Dr. Walter Willmertinger
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