Printers suddenly unavailable

[Chris]

Hello everyone.

I have a strange problem.  I am administering a small network.  I have a 
samba server on an RH 7.1 machine (samba 2.2.2 compiled from source).  The 
client is an XP machine.  It was working fine for months, and suddenly -- 
for no apparent reason I cannot connect to the printers served by the Samba 
machine.  They are there, they are browseable (when I make them so), I can 
even reinstall them -- but everytime I try to print to them I get "access 
denied".  I also happen to have netatalk working on this system, and I can 
print to all printers with the macintoshes -- so I know there is nothing 
physically wrong.

The RH 7.1 machine running samba is also a dual-boot to windows 98, when I 
do this and share the very same printers, it works as well.  What is really 
strange is that when I log into the XP machine as root, I can print!  No 
one else can, only root.

Now, my user is a member of the adm, root, and wheel groups. On the XP 
machine my user is a member of the Administrators group (as is root). I 
have tried using "admin users =" and "valid users =" on the printers in 
smb.conf and it didn't change a thing.  I have checked the perms on the 
spooling directories and they are fine, and all owned by lpd.  I have 
stopped and started lpd and smbd, rebooted --nothing.  I have checked my 
printcap files, and nothing has changed! (and I can print all day long from 
the rh7.1 machine to any printer).

I created several new users with and without these groups, and nothing 
worked.  Only root prints.

I was printing fine earlier in the day, and suddenly, it just stopped.  I 
wasn't doing any work on the machine (I was ssh'd into another machine in 
terminal window but that was it).  On the XP machine I installed cygwin 
between when I was able to print and suddenly not print.

At first I thought maybe XP did an auto-update that caused it, but since 
root can print that doesn't seem likely.

Anyone have any Idea what is going on here?

Thanks for your help.


Chris

My smb.conf that *was* working so well:

[Global]
netbios name = SamServer
workgroup = "HOMIES"
os level = 64
preferred master = yes
domain admin group = @adm
domain master = yes
local master = yes
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
security = user

add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g 100 -s /bin/false -M %u

encrypt passwords = yes
domain logons = yes
logon path = \\%N\profiles\%U

logon drive = H:
logon home = \\SamServer\%U

logon script = logon.cmd

[profiles]
         browseable = no
         path = /usr/local/samba/ntprofile
         writeable = yes
         create mask = 0600
         directory mask = 0700

# My network stuff

[laserjet4]
         browseable = yes
         path = /var/spool/lpd
         guest ok = Yes
         printable = Yes
         printer name = laserjet4
         valid users = me,root,her


[macwriter]
         browseable = yes
         path = /var/spool/lpd
         guest ok = Yes
         printable = Yes
         printer name = macwriter

[Homie_tmp]
         path = /home/homie_tmp
         valid users = me,root,her
         read only = No

[homes]
         path = %H/sam
         read only = No
         browseable = No

[netlogon]
         browseable = no
         path = /usr/local/samba/netlogon
         writable = no
         guest ok = no
         write list = root

[common]
         path = /home/common
         read only = no
         valid users = me,her,root
         force user = her