[Samba] Samba 3.0.0, CUPS support - "Unable to open printcap file cups for read!"

Fran Fabrizio fran at cis.uab.edu
Tue Dec 9 22:25:49 GMT 2003


> Use "testparm -v > smb-conf-as-seen-by-samba.txt" (hit ENTER twice)
> and then investigate "smb-conf-as-seen-by-samba.txt".

'testparm -v' shows that samba is seeing (trimmed to the relevant
entries):

[global]
        load printers = yes
        printers = cups
        printcap name = cups

[printers]
        comment = All Printers
        path = /var/spool/samba
        printer admin = root, @ntadmins
        guest ok = Yes
        printable = Yes
        browseable = No

> This means that *your* Samba tries to look for a printcap file with
> the *name* "cups" to read.

Yes, I thought that was odd - but I wasn't sure if that was just samba's 
generic way of saying that it couldn't initialize the CUPS printers.
There is no printcap file named 'cups'.  As you say, it shouldn't be
looking for one at all given that I've set printers = cups.  I guess the
most accurate description of the problem is to say samba isn't seeing
"printers = cups" as the magic that it signifies, it just sees it as the 
name of a plain old printcap file.  

So my logic said to check that cups support was compiled in, and 
'ldd /usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd' confirms that it is.  That's when I 
decided to post - I was fresh out of ideas. :-)  

> Maybe you are not running the smbd you think you are? Maybe
> you compiled yourself, and are still starting the previous
> smbd in a different path (not having libcups support compiled
> in?)

I removed the RedHat samba RPMs before compiling my own version. `which
smbd` doesn't find any smbd.  I start it with the full path to
/usr/local/samba/sbin/smbd in my init.d file for smb.

I'll keep tinkering with it.

-Fran



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