[Samba] Win2K Printer Driver Problems - Landscape margins off, no collat ing.

SMITH Gregory C. gsmith at ahbl.ca
Mon Oct 7 06:50:00 GMT 2002


Our environment:

Samba 2.2.5 on RedHat 7.2  (Tried on two different servers)
Printing handled by Cups 1.1.14-15

Printers shares available and print jobs being handled properly by cups.

THE PROBLEM:

New HP drivers uploaded to the PRINT$ share seem to be downloaded by clients
correctly, however the following problems occur:

1. In Word, changing page setup to landscape results in a "Margins outside
of printable range" error.  Choosing "Fix"  sets the left margin to 2.5" and
cuts off half of the page.  Any other application, even non MS apps, refuse
to print landscape no matter what orientation in Page Setup.  This happens
for any model of printer as long as an HP driver is used.

2. Trying Use Client Driver = Yes in smb.conf results in no one (printer
admins included) being able to save driver settings on the server or any
installed printers.

3. The only workaround we have is to use the Win2K stock HP LaserJet 4
driver for all printers (including 4000's and 5000's) but this driver has a
problem whereby it does not collate multiple copies.

We have wiped ntprinters.tdb and ntdrivers.tdb (with samba stopped of
course) and cleared the local driver cache on client machines. Still, the
second the printer is re-installed the problem re-occurs.

What is not clear is at what point Windows starts using the local copy of
the driver that has been downloaded.  If I change the driver on the server,
everyone who uses that printer instantly gets the changes.

All drivers work fine on a native Windows 2000 server or if the printer is
defined as a local printer connected to port that points at the Samba
server.

Somehow, sonewhere the printer driver information is getting corrupted on
the Samba servers.

Any ideas would be appreciated.  I have a way of rolling out all printers as
local on a global basis but would rather avoid having to look after the
local drivers on 180+ machines.

Thanks.




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