[Samba] Win2K Printer Driver Problems - Hi Jerry!!

[Gerald (Jerry) Carter]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, SMITH Gregory C. wrote:

> General Questions:
> 1. If the printer was already installed on a workstation and the driver is
> re-installed should the user re-install the printer?

The client spooler will grab new files as needed from the server.

> 2. What could cause the spooler to crash so often when updating drivers?

Bad printer drivers, null devmodes, etc...

> 3. When a driver is changed or updated on the server I see many
> (sometimes up to 15) print events in the workstation system event log
> noting drivers being updated but listing the same drivers each time.  
> Normal?

My personal belief is that this is related to our lack of creation 
timestamps for files. 

> 4. The ability to delete drivers, forms, etc from Server Properties in a
> server's Printers folder is disabled on a Samba server.  Is this an
> interface that hasn't been implemented yet?

It works.  Modifying forms as well.  Fixed in 2.2.6rc2.  You have to be 
connected as root or a printer admin though.

> 5. Many problems seem to occur when the server has multiple versions of
> different printer model drivers installed.  Should this make any
> difference?

No.  Should be fine.  Samba handles 9x/NT/2k/XP drivers all alongside each 
other.

> 6. Related to #4, Cleaning out the Samba-side printer driver environment
> seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition.  I.e. You have to stop Samba,
> delete nt*.tdb and everything under W32X86.  Is there a better way?

See my comments on #4.  Also note that 3.0alpha20 has the 
DeletePrinterDriverEx() RPC implemente which allows you to remove
driver files as well as driver information programatically.



cheers, jerry