[Samba] Information on setting up printers for windows clients (win2k/win9x)

[Gerald Carter]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, Gary Algier wrote:

> 	1) The HP drivers I downloaded from www.hp.com and uploaded
> 	   to the Samba server are bad.



> 	2) The fact that I uploaded HP drivers for non-duplexing
> 	   printers as well as duplexing printers and Samba folded
> 	   these into one common driver.

Nope.  Should not be a problem.  

> 	3) Downloaded drivers just don't act the same as the native
> 	   Win2k drivers.

This is true

> 	4) One or more of the *.tdb files that records the
> 	   driver information is corrupt.  I tried to delete
> 	   what I thought mattered, but I don't know exactly how
> 	   the *.tdb files are used.

See previous mail about this.

> If you want to upload the drivers, the docs are a bit off and there
> are several things I learned that should be there as warnings.  Here's
> the proceedure that I made work (with notes):
> [If I am doing something wrong, somebody please correct me, but the
> proceedure in the Samba Docs just does not work (see note (c))]
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> How to install printer drivers to a print server from Windows 2k.
> 
> 1) Open the server.  Use something like \\server in the "Run..." box.
> 2) Open "Printers" folder.
> 3) Right click on printer and select "Properties".
> 4) You will get a dialog box displaying:
>          Device settings cannot be displayed.  The driver for the
>          specified printer is not installed.  Only spooler properties
>          will be displayed.  Do you want to install the driver now?
>     Select "Yes".

Select "no" as per the documentation (Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf).
This will bring up the properties dialog with an empty driver name.
The click on the "New Driver" button.


<snip...>


> Notes:
> 
> a) Sometimes you will be prompted for a file it can't seem to fine.
>     The requested file will be right where it is looking, it just can't
>     see it.  To continue, just select "Browse" and then select "Open" in the
>     file selection dialog box.  It will find the file it was looking for.
> 
> b) When installing second and subsequent printers of the same model,
>     when you select the "Sharing" tab and the "Additional Drivers" button
>     you will see the other OS drivers already installed.  However, you
>     will still need to install the driver locally as well as the first
>     remote driver.

Incorrect.  See previous note after your step #4.

> c) It may be tempting to skip the local driver install.  Don't.  You will
>     be able to upload the network driver correctly, but you will never
>     be able to upload the drivers for the other platforms.  If you try
>     you will get an error.  You can't install the local driver after the

What error?  I've always been able to upload drivers this way?

>     network driver, so the only way to fix this is to find another
>     Windows 2k client that has never used these printers.  This also
>     means that the client used to install all "Other Platform" drivers
>     must have had local drivers installed before ever trying to print
>     to the print server as setting a client up for printing will
>     download network drivers precluding the use of local drivers.
>
> d) Any system used to upload all these drivers can't be used to test
>     auto install of network drivers as the local drivers must be installed
>     first (see above) and that precludes driver downloads.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you are still having problems.









cheers, jerry
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