Samba & Network Printers

[Jim Morris]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 stuart.callender at ellisonslegal.com wrote:

> Before I start this project, I would appreciate any infeed as to whether it
> would be possible for me to set up a Linux Print Server to control these
> printers, without the need to physically connect them to the Linux server.
> My gut feeling is that it is possible, but I am not sure about the steps
> needed to accomplish this feat.

Yes - I have done just this in the past.  The printers implement the
lpd/lpr protocol, which is pretty much the "native" Unix printing
protocol. You configure the Linux system to access these as remote
Unix-style printers using the IP address of each printer when defining the
print queues under Linux.  You can also specify a queue name on the
printer to use as well - not sure this matters though.  I don't have one
of these printers handy right now, as they are all out at a customer site
where I did some consulting work in the past...

> Would I need to set them up under Linux first, then configure Samba to
> control them?

Yes. Once setup in the printcap under Linux, the printers SHOULD
automatically show up for Samba clients, if you have the [printers] share
configured properly in smb.conf.

> Some brief steps would be extremelly appreciated in order to get me started
> on this one......

I suggest setting up the printers first, and making sure you can print to
them from the Linux system. If just about any "modern" Linux distribution
(Redhat, Mandrake, Caldera, Suse), there will be a printer control panel
style utility that should assist you in configuring each print queue, as
well as print test pages too.

Once that is done, simply setup the [printers] share in smb.conf. This can
be done manually (see "man smb.conf"), or via a control panel utility such
as Swat, Webmin or Linuxconf...

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| Jim Morris  |  jim at morris-world.com |
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