[Samba] Slow printing / print properties with CUPS and Samba NOT sort-of-solved

[Jason Balicki]

John H Terpstra <mailto:jht at Samba.Org> wrote:
> Lessons like this are hard earned, and therefore worth documenting.
> Please communicate with me when you are refreshed. Let's see what we
> can do to better document this. I'm with you in this.

John,

Looks like I jumped the gun.  Everything was fine when I
left last night, but I connected this morning remotely
to take care of a backup issue and checked the printers
on a whim -- they have reverted to what they were doing
before.

I'm now back in the office, banging my head against that
same wall.

I've run a brand new cable from my switch closet to one
of the problem printers and the problem persists.

I'm in the process of taking samba out of the equation,
I've connected to the printers to CUPS on the server using
ipp from the XP machines and the time it takes to get into
the printer properties is now instant.  No perceptible
delay at all.

This is weird.  I have three Canon ImageRunner 5000 printers:
canonnewlo, canonback and canonmiddle.  I use the same client
side drivers for all three printers, the PCL5e drivers.  Using
PS drivers makes no difference.

Using Samba, canonback is fine.  Instant connection.
canonmiddle and canonnewlo are slow.  I've run new lines
directly to the printers, bypassing the wall wiring and I
get the same results.  I've put my machine, my server and
canonnewlo on separate 3com 24 port 10/100 switch that I've
got (it has one GB port, too -- I put the server on that
and in a regular 10/100 port) and I have the same
symptoms.  I *pretty sure* that I've eliminated network
hardware as being the issue, though I haven't changed
out NICs in any of the machines -- but, like I said,
this is a brand new server and the problems were the
same on the old server using a different GB NIC and I
have this same issue on different network clients,
AFAIK, only XP SP2 machines.  I am going to verify this
statement in a little bit though.  I know the problem
surfaced when I started installing SP2, but that could
have just brought attention to an existing problem, 
I dont' know.

I'm torn now between just using CUPS and IPP to print
(they still queue on the server, which is what I want)
or try to fix this Samba issue.  I'm sure, knowing
my luck, that if I decide to use CUPS to print and
bypass Samba I'm going to find something that won't work,
come Monday morning.

I'm *so* sorry for jumping the gun and calling this
issue resolved.  Hopefully anyone looking will find
this followup.  If I do get a resolution I will let
everyone know, but I promise to let it go for a few
days to be sure before I post a resolution.

--J(K)

> On Saturday 06 November 2004 22:45, Jason Balicki wrote:
>> I've been banging my head against some printing problems
>> that I've been having for quite a while.  This weekend
>> I am migrating an old server to new hardware and a new
>> base OS, but the version of Samba and CUPS remain the
>> same.  Because of this I moved all the config files
>> and the contents of /var/cache/samba from the old
>> server to the new.  (Foreshadowing:  this was a mistake,
>> but not a big one.)  Since the new server would be a
>> complete replacement of the old no changes were necessary.
>> 
>> The problems I had been having boil down to this:  If
>> my users tried to go to the printer properties or tried
>> to select "file->print" from any print menu it would
>> take a long time for a response.  "Long time" being
>> 30-40 seconds, sometimes more than a minute.
>> 
>> I should mention that this started when I installed
>> Windows XP service pack 2 on my network and that
>> this issue ONLY affects XP boxes with SP 2 installed.
>> 
>> I told my users "I'm installing a new server soon,
>> that will fix it."  Of course it didn't and that's
>> why I'm still at work at 11:33PM on a Saturday. :(
>> 
>> I've tried a lot of things to fix this, but what I
>> did to fix it was to stop samba, remove all the
>> printing tdb's and restart samba.  Upon further
>> discovery I found that I could just remove
>> the tdb for the printer I was having trouble with.
>> 
>> Response time has gone from 30-40 seconds to 1-3
>> seconds.  This is MUCH more reasonable.
>> 
>> Details:
>> 
>> I have a multitude of printers, but the worst one
>> was one of my Canon ImageRunner 5000.
>> 
>> I stopped samba:
>> 
>> service smb stop
>> 
>> removed the tdb files:
>> 
>> cd /var/cache/samba
>> rm ntprinters.tdb ntforms.tdb ntdrivers.tdb
>> cd printing
>> rm <printername>.tdb printers.tdb
>> 
>> restarted samba:
>> 
>> service smb start
>> 
>> Samba then recreates the tdb files as it starts.
>> 
>> I am not sure that you need to remove anything
>> other than <printername>.tdb since I removed
>> everything, but after I did I was able to
>> remove other printer tdb files and get response
>> time back.
>> 
>> I hope this helps someone, and sorry for repeating
>> a lot of things, but I wanted to make sure that
>> someone would be able to find this fix if they
>> were searching with google or some other engine.
>> 
>> And John T:  I'm willing to write this up a little
>> better if you want to add it to the troubleshooting
>> section of the HOWTO.  Just let me know.  I
>> can write much better, I'm just exhausted at the
>> moment, but I figured if I didn't write up a little
>> something now that I'd be too lazy to do it later.
>> 
>> Key words:  samba print printing slow windows xp service
>> pack sp2 sp 2 xpsp2 properties right click right-click
>> 
>> --J(K)