printer browsing (solution)

[D.W. Bouhuijs]

I found a solution to this problem.
It's a bit nasty but it works.
The samba server must be configured with printer support enabled.
Install the printers, but use a local LPR port.
lpd server: "samba print server".
queue: "queue name".
Install the printer drivers.
Open the registry with regedit.
Go to: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\printername
Open the key: "Port".
Change: server:queue into \\server\queue

This will prevent the system to overload the server with printer status
requests
of all installed printers, because for that it now looks on the local
machine.
This saves a lot of waiting time when users want print from applications.
When printing, users can still ask for individual queue status' and cancel
their own printjobs.
If users double-click an installed printer (start > settings > printers).
The queue status of that printer will then be shown.

This solution created a workable situation in my organisation,
using more than 100 printers installed on just two print servers.

Derk.

> Samba 2.2.2 on Solaris 8, Windows 2000.
>
> To test, I have installed about 50 network printers, printing via samba.
> It works fine and users can control there own printjobs, however......
> Whenever I open e.g. Start>settings>printers or try to print using an
> application,
> the machine asks (samba uses lpstat %p) the status of all these printers.
> The machine also does this frequently to refresh its cache.
> This causes my server to generate numerous of in.lpd processes.
> If more than 400 machines do that, it would be deadly.
>
> Is there a way to disable this behavior.
>
> Regards, Derk.