[Samba] Printing on Samba with WinNT...

[Rainer Hantsch]

Hello!

Because I did not receive any useful answer on this issue, I want to ask now
the THIRD time. It starts to become critical, because users are handicaped by
this stupid problem, so any suggestion is welcome.

Servers: SuSE 9.0 with Samba 2.2.5
         Encrypted Passwords = no
         // Full  smb.conf  at the end of this mail. //
         // I added some explanations to it here (manually). //

         There are also two Windoze NT4 Servers. -- They are NO PDC's!
         One is very old, the other one is required because of some
         crazy software which forces a Windoze SQL Database.


Clients: Win-NT 4.0 Workstation
         EnablePlainTextPassword=1


All Windows machines are configured using NO PASSWORDS. Because the Linux
machine is also accessible from Internet (it is the mail server, I do remote
administration, ..., the Linux server - of course - uses good passwords.


Actual situation:
-----------------
When starting up Windows-Clients, the user presses "Ctrl+Alt+Del" to login as
user - and simply hits "Enter", because he has no password to enter. Windows
comes up and starts connecting the remote folders. When it comes to the
folders on Linux, I have to enter the password, then it proceeds.

·  Sometimes printing is still NOT possible, while the dummy connection to
   'cdrom' is established; in this case the stupid Windoze has to be restar-
   ted.  :-/
·  If one accidently enters a wrong password, it often happens that this
   dummy network connection to 'cdrom' has to be deleted and re-configured
   again, otherwise I get not asked again for the password.
·  Opening the printer status window I get a message in the window header
   that the printer cannot be accessed. THOUGH, I am able to print, but
   I cannot see any printing jobs already queued, nor can I delete them.
·  Also, it needs a long while until printing a simple job is completed.
   Maybe this is because of some timeout?

Finally I added a HotFolder and told the users to "print to file" (even
directly into this folder, or collecting some jobs otherwhere (local disk) and
then move them to the hotfolder. This seems to work much better because it
reduces the problematic points of Windoze to 1/2 (a connected directory is
enough). -- But it also makes it more complicated in handling, so this is no
final solution at all.

What I am looking for:
======================
1.  I would like to configure SAMBA to accept any kind of connection, if
    possible without password. Because SAMBA is bound to the internal
    LAN card, this should be no security problem at all.
    Can I set up SAMBA that way? Would be great if it accepts everything
    and does everything in the name of one user (because it does only
    printing, this should be fine).

2.  If  1.)  does not work, what's about using one user with a trivial
    password for all windoze users? How do I set this up?




mfg

  Ing. Rainer Hantsch





Here the current smb.conf:

---<smb.conf>-------------
# smb.conf is the main samba configuration file. You find a full commented
# version at /usr/share/doc/packages/samba/examples/smb.conf.SuSE
# Date: 2002-09-12
[global]
	workgroup = SCHWELCH
	os level = 62
	time server = yes
	unix extensions = yes
	encrypt passwords = no
	map to guest = Bad User
	log level = 1
	syslog = 0
	printing = BSD
	printcap name = /etc/printcap
	socket options = SO_KEEPALIVE IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY
	wins support = no
	character set = ISO8859-15
	client code page = 850
#	veto files = /*.eml/*.nws/riched20.dll/*.{*}/

	interfaces = 10.0.0.2/255.255.255.0
#	domain master = yes

# Because no users shall have access to their Unix Home Paths, I remark this.
#[homes]
#	comment = Home Directories
#	valid users = %S
#	browseable = no
#	writeable = yes
#	create mask = 0640
#	directory mask = 0750

# This is a dummy share because NT is stupid and requires a Network share
# to be able to use printers
[cdrom]
	comment = DVD-ROM Linux
	path = /media/dvd
	browseable = yes
	writeable = no
	directory mask = 0555

# This is a HotFolder which is maintained by a daemon. When Windoze places
# files here, the daemon waits until they are 2 minutes old, then queues
# them to the printer and deletes them.  (This is my first workaround.)
[encad-spool]
	comment = HotFolder für Encad
	path = /var/spool/hotfolder
	browseable = yes
	writeable = yes
	directory mask = 0777
	create mask = 0666
        force create mask = 0666
        force directory mask = 0777

[printers]
	comment = All Printers
	path = /tmp
	printable = yes
	create mask = 0600
	browseable = no

# There are no printer drivers on Linux so I remark this.
#[print$]
#	comment = Printer Drivers
#	path = /var/lib/samba/drivers
#	write list = @ntadmin root
#	force group = ntadmin
#	create mask = 0664
#	directory mask = 0775
---</smb.conf>------------