[Samba] [print$] again

[Frank Fürst]

Some days ago, you helped me getting rid of old printer driver
information, that worked well. I have now setup a different printer for
the same network printer box, one that beautifully installs its drivers
locally with the Add Printer Wizard.

So I thought, why not try again and install the drivers to the samba
server? I followed the instructions in htmldocs/printer_driver2.html and
could copy the files to the server (if I did a slight alteration to the
process described in the file, see below). However, after that it takes
several minutes until a double-click on the Add-Printer-Wizard-Icon in
the printers window, or a click on properties of any printer in the
print$-share yields a reaction.

And in the end, when I choose properties, it again says 

"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?"

just as if I hadn't done anything. 

What can have happened? In which logfile, and at which debug level,
would an error be visible?

Here's what I did exactly: I created the directories

$ lal /usr/local/lib/samba/printers/
total 16
drwxrwxr-x    4 root     wsadmin      4096 Feb 28 14:15 .
drwxrwxr-x    4 root     wsadmin      4096 Feb 28 19:39 ..
drwxrwxr-x    3 root     wsadmin      4096 Feb 28 14:18 w32x86
drwxrwxr-x    2 root     wsadmin      4096 Feb 28 13:54 win40

and added the following to my smb.conf:

[global]
printer admin = @wsadmin

[print$] 
path = /usr/local/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
write list = @wsadmin,root

(the samba-user admin, member of the unix group wsadmin, is also the
domain administrator who has administrator permissions on the NT
clients). 

I then followed the instructions: In Windows Explorer, I went to Network
Neighbourhood, then to the Samba-PDC, then to its Printers share. I
right-klicked on the printer and chose properties, and here is the
difference to the instructions:

1. I answered "no" to the driver install question in the error dialog,
   as described in the instructions. Then I chose "new driver", "Yes"
   again to the "are you sure"-question, "Have disk", "Browse" and went
   to the correct *.inf. The copying went on, then it took a long time
   where nothing happened, but the properties window was inactive. In
   the end it said (I'm translating from german): "Sorry, it wasn't
   possible to switch to the new driver. I will continue to use the old
   one." Consequently, when trying the printer properties again, it
   again complains

"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?"


2. In a second approach (or, to be honest, I did that first by mistake),
   starting with a clean .../printers/w32x86/ directory, I answered
   "Yes" to the question that appears when first chosing properties and
   that asks wether I want to install the drivers. 

   The rest is identical, the inactive time after the file copying was
   perhaps a little shorter, and there is _no_ error message that the
   new drivers couldn't be used. However, when one tries to open the
   printer properties in the network neighbourhood, or even just start
   the Add Printer Wizard in the local Printers folder, it takes several
   minutes until something happens (and what happens is that it says it
   has no drivers).

In both cases, I can't find anything suspicious in the logfiles at level
three - but anyway I don't know after what to look.

Is it o.k. that the files are first extracted to .../printers/w32x86/
and later renamed to /printers/w32x86/2/* ?

Strange thing,
Frank
-- 
Frank Fürst, physikalische Biochemie, Universität Potsdam, Germany
Tel.: +49-331-977-5062		Fax: +49-331-977-5062