printing from nt4

Mike Brodbelt m.brodbelt at acu.ac.uk
Tue Jan 4 09:26:52 GMT 2000


Johnny Nordman wrote:
> 
> 
> I have read PRINTER_DRIVER.txt and accordning to that text this is not
> possible with NT4 clients.
> 
> My questions are:
> 
> 1. Is there any way to get this working with NT4-clients?

AFAIK, no. If I understand the problem correctly, under NT, raw data is
sent to the NT server, which passes it through the print driver. The NT
print driver is essentially a windows executable, and Samba can't
execute windows code. I seem to remember that someone was working on the
spoolss code a while back, but I've no idea as to the current status -
I'm sure there is someone on this list who knows....?
 
> 2. Other suggestions to get "Connecting to Printer" as easy as possible
> for clients. Printerdrivers might be installed locally but installation
> should be "automated".

Specifying the "printer driver" option correctly for each printer share
means that the NT client will know which driver requires installation.
The path to the install media is located in the registry, you should be
able to change this to point to a network path where you maintain a copy
of the NT install files. Doing this should make printer installation a
no brainer.... The only glitch is that to install a print driver
locally, you need administrative access to the local machine. You may be
able to change user rights to obviate this, but I'm not sure what you'd
need there - experiment...
 
HTH

Mike.


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