Printer settings and drivers from Samba server

[Rick Cochran]

Axel,

Did you ever get anywhere with this?

I have been working hard on it and have discovered the following:

1. You need to have a 'printer driver = xxx' in your smb.conf entry
for the printer in question:

[osgood]
; chmod 1777 /usr/spool/samba
   printer = osgood
   path = /usr/spool/samba
   comment = Test entry for osgood
   printer driver = IBM 4019 LaserPrinter PS39
   browseable = yes
   printable = yes
   public = no
   writable = no
   create mode = 0700

2. You need to have a 'print$' share containing something or other:

[print$]
   comment = Printer Drivers
   path = /afs/msc.cornell.edu/i386_windows/printer_drivers
   public = no
   writable = no
   browseable = no 

-------- Almost everything below this line is speculation. --------

3. One candidate for the 'something' which needs to go in the 'print$'
share is whatever WinNT puts in its 'print$' share when you share that
printer.  In my case (Unix view):

w32x86/
./w32x86:
2/             IBM39523.PPD*  PSCRIPT.GID*   PSCRPTUI.DLL*
HP3SI523.PPD*  PSCRIPT.DLL*   PSCRIPT.HLP*

./w32x86/2:
HP3SI523.BPD*  IBM39523.BPD*  PSCRIPT.DLL*   PSCRPTUI.DLL*
HP3SI523.PPD*  IBM39523.PPD*  PSCRIPT.HLP*

Unfortunately, NT still denies all knowledge:

"The server on which the printer resides does not have a suitable
IBM 4019 LaserPrinter PS39 printer driver installed."

However, other NT hosts _can_ access the printer _as reshared by an NT
host_!!  The only explanation I can think of for this (aided by
various hints from various places) is that if an NT host is accessing
a printer shared from another NT host, it will _use_ the driver
provided by the other NT host.  If an NT host is accessing a printer
shared from a non-NT host, it has to _install_ the driver provided by
the non-NT host.

This requires creating a custom '.inf' file for the Samba 'print$'
share.  I haven't tried this yet.

Any further information would be greatly appreciated.  The Samba
documentation is abysmally silent.

-Rick

-- 
|Rick Cochran		  			      phone: 607-255-7223|
|Cornell Materials Science Center			FAX: 607-255-3957|
|E20 Clark Hall, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853	      email: rick at msc.cornell.edu|
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