Question of printing from Linux to an NT share

[Rob Tanner]

First, thanks to all who helped me through problems establishing a 
machine account for the Samba server on the NT PDC -- works now!

In our public access student labs we have put in place a printing 
chargeback to both get control of paper and toner costs and discourage 
heavy abusers.  Just so you know were not meanies, after collecting 
some of our own stats and also querying like colleges doing the same 
thing, we've come up with a high enough free allottment that most 
students will never cross into the nickel a page zone.

Anyway, that leads me to a different problem I'm hoping Samba can help 
me solve.  Computer Science is finally making more use of Linux than NT 
in their programming classes.  The machines are all dual-boot because 
the rest of the time the labs are general purpose labs.  The chargeback 
mechanism is an NT utility called Pcounter that tracks printer use and 
counts pages (actually queries the printer for page counts -- which 
means it's pretty acurate).  But how do I get the Linux machines to 
print through that mechanism?  I've looked at both smbspool and 
smbclient as options, but in order to use either tool I need access to 
the plaintext version of the users password.  I could keep a file of 
plaintext passwords, but even with root protection, that's a VERY bad 
practice.  What would be perfect is to have the user log into the NT 
network when he logs into Linux just as he/she would do when logging 
into an NT.  Are there any packages that do that?  Or does anybody have 
other suuggestions?  I'm rather new at getting things to move from 
Linux/Unix to NT so I'm stumped?

Thanks,
Rob



       _ _ _ _           _    _ _ _ _ _
      /\_\_\_\_\        /\_\ /\_\_\_\_\_\
     /\/_/_/_/_/       /\/_/ \/_/_/_/_/_/  QUIDQUID LATINE DICTUM SIT,
    /\/_/__\/_/ __    /\/_/    /\/_/          PROFUNDUM VIDITUR
   /\/_/_/_/_/ /\_\  /\/_/    /\/_/
  /\/_/ \/_/  /\/_/_/\/_/    /\/_/         (Whatever is said in Latin
  \/_/  \/_/  \/_/_/_/_/     \/_/              appears profound)

  Rob Tanner
  UNIX and Networks Manager
  Linfield College, McMinnville OR
  (503) 434-2558 <rtanner at linfield.edu>