Samba & Network Printers

[Gary S MacKay]

I'm not sure you need to worry about having the proper drivers on the samba 
box. I've setup many of these and the only thing you need is to define the 
printer in /etc/printcap (ie. lp1, lp2, lp3, etc.) and, as mentioned, in 
the smb.conf file. If you are not going to actually print from an app 
running on the samba box, then don't worry about drivers. Samba just passes 
the traffic through.

- Gary


At 08:37 AM 12/18/2001 -0600, Jim Morris wrote:
>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...
>
>  --
>/-------------------------------------\
>| Jim Morris  |  jim at morris-world.com |
>\-------------------------------------/

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