[Samba] Problems printing to Samba printer from W2K (Very Slow)

[Chad Edwards]

I am having problems printing to a Samba printer from
my Windows 2000 machines. While eventually it does
print, it takes an extremely long time. The test page
takes over 5 minutes to print. I have tracked it to
the Samba spooling process. The delay is in Windows
sending the information to the Samba spool. If I look
in the Samba spool directory during the print process,
the file size increases very slowly. Once the file is
in the Samba spool directory, it is then sent to the
LPR spool very quickly and prints immediately
thereafter. Does anyone know why the spooling to Samba
is taking so long? Regular file transfers to directory
shares on the same Samba server from the same Windows
2000 machine are fast. I have tried both the file
transfers and printing from multiple Windows 2000
machines with the same results.

As a secondary problem, the Samba print spool
directory (/var/spool/samba) periodically disappears
on my server. I have not been able to find any reason
for this to be happening. The permissions are all set
to be owned by root with read, write and execute for
all (chmod 1777). I will create the directory and set
the permissions, leave the machine with no one logged
in and eventually the directory disappears. Sometimes
it happens within hours; some times it takes days. I
don’t know if this is related to the slow printing
problem or not.

My configuration is:
Red Hat 6.2 with all of the errata patches applied
Samba 2.2.3a installed via supplied RPM from Samba.org
Windows 2000 Pro with all of the latest service packs
installed
Lexmark 5700 colour inkjet printer

Unfortunately I no longer have my smb.conf file
available as due to the printing problems, the server
was converted to Windows NT 4.0 Server. However, if
anyone can shed some light on these problems, I would
happily switch back to the Linux/Samba configuration.

Thanks for you help

Chad


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