Configuring printer drivers

[Peter Blake]

On Thu, 4 Dec 1997, Sean Murphy wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been running a samba server for our small group of users (about 15) for 
> approx the last 18 months with great success. We use the server for both file 
> and printer sharing.
> 
> I had to make some modifications to the printer configuration today, and I've 
> got a quick question which arose from my tinkering.
> 
> I wanted to configure the server such that each of our printers can be used 
> with either postscript or the native driver. Hence, I set up two 'printers' on 
> samba for each actual printer - one with the "printer driver" parameter set to 
> the native printer driver, and the other with the "printer driver" parameter 
> set to the postscript driver.
> 
> When I tried to install one of the new printers on a client (Win NT), 
> windows NT informed me that it could not find the driver on the server 
> (presumably the samba server), and was checking it's the set of printer drivers 
> stored locally. This gave me the impression that the printer drivers can be 
> stored on the server in a place in which the SMB client will automatically 
> look, and, if found, automatically use as the printer driver. Is this correct? 
> If so, where should I store the printer drivers?
> 
> I'm running samba v1.9.17p4 on Solaris 2.5 with a mixture of win95 and winNT 
> clients if it matters.
> 

Hi,

I have found it best to use a raw "pass-through" mode for the unix print
filter when printing from NT[45], W95 and WFWG3.11.

The only exception occurs is when the printer does not support postscript
- you have to detect the PS header and use the unix-resident utilities to
convert the file to PCL5, or whatever.

Known to work for the last three years or so.

Regards,


---
Peter Blake
ppb at hft.co.uk
ppb at baloo.tcp.co.uk