Why Is Printing Such a Problem?

[Stan Koper]

I have Samba 2.0.6.3 (or is it 6.5?) running on a SuSE 6.2 system.  I
currently have three Windows 95/98 clients attached to my linux machine,
which is a firewall/gateway to the internet via cable modem.

When I was using Samba 1.-something, I was able to print to the printer on
the linux box from two of the three Windows 95 machines on the network.
Since I upgraded to 2.0.6, I haven't been able to print anything.  I set up
a [printers] share, and I can see three printers in network neighborhood
(ascii, lp2, and raw).  I followed the instructions in the O'Reilly SAMBA
book, and set up a specific hpdskjet (it's a 600) share, and it showed up
fine in network neighborhood, but every time I try to print, I get "network
printer no longer available".

I can see the document going to the printer, but the print status is blank
and then changes to "user intervention required".  Sometimes, when I try to
delete the document, I get "you don't have permission to do that", but I
think it's because the document has already been deleted, not because the
permissions aren't set.  I can even see other documents, printed from linux
using lpr, from the Windows 95 clients.

I'm not at my network right now, so I can't print out the smb.conf file, or
the result of testparm, but I have a dozen versions of the smb.conf file,
each incorporating one or more suggestions made on the list to others, and
none of them work.

Why should this be so difficult?