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

[Steven Mackenzie]

I can't give you any clues about the dissappearing spool directory, but if
you search the mail archive (linked from the samba web pages), you'll see a
few of us posting regarding the slow printing issues with 2.2.3.

They seem to be worst from MS Office applications when using NT4 (type 2)
drivers.

One suggestion is to ensure that you have the latest Windows 2000 drivers
loaded on the server (type 3 drivers, which will be in the W32X86/3
directory of your print$ share, if you have installed them).

My solution was to revert to Samba 2.2.2 while the developers work on the
problem, which they have said they are doing right now ...

I hope that is helpful,
Steven

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad Edwards" <c_g_edwards at yahoo.ca>
To: <samba at lists.samba.org>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 4:34 PM
Subject: [Samba] Problems printing to Samba printer from W2K (Very Slow)


> 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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