[Samba] Windows XP SP2 slow printing solution

[Martin Zielinski]

Hello!

Problem still exists. I failed to find the reason, so here are my 
observations regarding the problem.

On Tuesday 16 November 2004 10:16, Walter Willmertinger wrote:
> Thank you very much, I  tried your solution 3 (the http- or URL
> -printing method). Speed is now very good.
[...]
>
> Jason Balicki schrieb:
> >Walter Willmertinger <> wrote:
> >>I upgraded to 3.0.8 with no difference in the speed of the printer
> >>dialogue and other printer related topics.
> >>It is still very, very slow. For example, Adobe 6.0 takes about 10
> >>seconds to show the printer dialogue.
> >>
> >>So it seems, that the problem is not fixed.
> >>I sure think it is a problem in SP2, because I removed already SP2 and
> >>all works in normal speed.
> >>The problem is that you cannot go around SP2 only if you ignore any MS
> >>XP updates.
[...]
> >
> >Here's what I've learned:
> >
> >1) It's NOT universal, and only appears to affect certain printers/
> >print drivers.  I have Canon ImageRunners that have this problem,
> >but I have several HP printers and a Ricoh color laser that doesn't.
> >The Canon printers have the problem no matter what driver I attempt
> >to print with (they support PCL and PostScript.)  I've tried every
> >version of both languages that I could get my hands on.

True. I use a CANON color driver or a Kyocera KX driver for the KM2530. 
Allways the same problem. HP drivers from the Windows CD does not have the 
problem.


> >
> >2) It IS an issue with Windows XP SP 2 and Samba.  If I change
> >either of those, i.e., uninstall SP2 or share the printer on another
> >Windows machine (or use a print method other than smb) the problem
> >goes away.

same here.

> >
> >3) You can work around the problem by printing to CUPS/IPP directly.
> >When setting up the printer select "network" printer and then select
> >the "connect to a printer on the Internet..." radio button.  Then
> >you can use the url "http://<servername>:631/printers/printername"
> >to connect to your printer.  This has the distinct drawback of
[...]
This is a non point 'n print solution...
[...]
> >
> >>Bret Jordan schrieb:
> >>>Also if your printers are in a different VLAN check your firewall
> >>>rules and or router ACLs to make sure the CUPs/Samba server can talk
> >>>about to the clients correctly.  When you do a packet capture you
> >>>will see what I am talking about.
> >>>
> >>>Bret
> >>>
> >>>Darrin Yeager wrote:
> >>>>>On the printer server, we are running samba 3.0.1, and on the WINS
> >>>>>server we are running an older version, 2.2.5.
> >>>>>Recently, some of our computers were upgraded to XP SP2. After the
> >>>>>upgrade, accessing the samba shared printers from the XP machines
> >>>>>was incredibly slow. It would take tens of seconds to even bring
> >>>>>up the printer status window, and printing from acrobat could take
> >>>>>several minutes.
> >>>>
> >>>>You'll have to upgrade the 3.0.1 box -  MS introduced a bug in XP
> >>>>SP2 for printing which samba fixed in the later versions (> 3.0.5 I
> >>>>believe).
> >>>>
> >>>>Look at the release notes for the latest samba version and search
> >>>>for "SP2" and you'll see the problem.
> >>>>
> >>>>http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.0.8.html

Not mentioned before:

1st. On my system the problem only occurrs, when the client has a local 
devicemode !
This is created, when the user changes some settings of the printer. 
The devicemode is located in the registry under 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\Connections\<servername,printer_name>.
No more slow down, after deleting the devicemode.

Could you please verify, if this is true in your enviroments?

2nd. All drivers I tried out, only have this problem, if they have a large 
private data field in the devicemode. Maybe the problem is related to this.

3rd. The slow down is a loop through the printer's registry values. In the 
network trace I can see GetPrinterData calls over and over.

Hopefully someone gets an idea, how to work around this MS bug.

Greetings,
Martin

-- 
Martin Zielinski                       mz at seh.de
Software Development
SEH Computertechnik GmbH     www.seh.de