[Samba] Printing with CUPS & Samba...

[Jim Carter]

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003, Brad wrote:
> I am trying to print from both a Win98 PC via Samba and a Red Hat 8.0
> workstation to an HP 4 Plus printer that is connected to a Red Hat 8.0
> server. I have managed to get the Win98 PC working OK, but am having
> difficulty with the RH8 workstation.

I have a similar setup: Linux server with printer, Linux client, WinXP
client.  The print manager on the server is CUPS.  I have Samba set up
similar to what you described, and the WinXP machine is able to print to it
(but not see the print queue; I posted a question recently about that).
As for the client, I de-installed lprng and installed cups.
/etc/cups/client.conf is empty, i.e. all comments.  Thus it relies on
broadcasts from the server to know what printer(s) are available.  It works
great.  No administrative hassle on the client, and no involvement with
Samba.  The Samba solution could be made to work but is probably not worth
the effort.

The client is a laptop, and when I take it to work it hears the CUPS
broadcast and can access the work printers.

CUPS broadcasts are on by default.  It's governed by "Browsing On" (or Off)
in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf on the server.

It turns out that Win2K and WinXP have CUPS (IPP) support natively!
There's an add-on for WinME; I don't know about NT or 95-98.  In the
"Add Printer Wizard", specify http printing and give a URL similar to:
    http://server.company.com:631/printers/lp
(assuming "lp" is the print queue on the server).  The only downside is
that the print queue display looks funny, but maybe that's just because I
haven't used it on big print jobs that would stay in the queue.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: jimc at math.ucla.edu  http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)