[Samba] Printing only works sometimes

[Joseph Carri]

I posted the message below, on the
gmane.network.samba.general newsgroup some days ago,
and haven't got any replies yet.  If anyone has any
suggestions as to what can be done, please let me
know.

I have been trying to use Samba 2.2.6 to print from
two SCO Openserver 5.0.7 servers (VDOHOM & VDOHOM2, IP
addresses 192.168.1.121 & 192.168.1.122) on a WAN
consisting of networks 192.168.1.0, 192.168.11.0 &
192.168.21.0, interconnected by ISDN leased lines
using CISCO 805 routers.  The WAN has been up and
running for months and there are no communications
problems. Users have been runing various Oracle
applications on Win2K servers, connecting to the
internet through another Win2k server and a firewall,
and connecting to the Unix servers with Telnet.

I installed and configured Samba to print to printers
attached to the WIN 2003 Servers JUMBOSRV1 & MSTSVR on
192.168.11.200 & 192.168.21.200 respectively, using
smbprint.sysv.  All Samba parameters are at default
value. The WIN 2000 Server (W2k-SVR, 192.168.1.1) is
the PDC & WINS Server for the entire domain,
consisting of all three LANS.  Printing from any
Windows workstation to any of teh printers functions
correctly.

I have created a user called samba on the two
Openserver machines as well as on the Windows Domain. 
The user was added with with useradd & smbpasswd.  I
do not have any problem accessing or browsing test
shares on the UNIX machines.

I am currently trying to set up the printing from the
UNIX servers to the WIN 2003 Server jumbosvr1.  I
intend to set up a similar print facility on mstsvr
after this.

My problem is this.  Some of the time, I can print
from either Unix server without any problems at all. 
However, about half the time, lpstat claims the
document has been printed, but nothing in fact is
printed.  The Win 2003 servers do not show any queued
documents.

When a document prints correctly the arguments (passed
by lp -d jumbo -ob filename) to smbrpint.sysv
(redirected to a log file) are:

Arguments = jumbo-37777 root  1  b
/SPARE/APPLICATION/LOCATIONS/invt/mkt/x 

And the smbclient message (I have redirected output to
a log file) is:

added interface ip=192.168.1.122 bcast=192.168.1.255
nmask=255.255.255.0
Domain=[DOMAIN] OS=[Windows Server 2003 3790]
Server=[Windows Server 2003 5.2]
smb: \> CR/LF<->LF and print text translation now on
smb: \> putting file - as stdin-27268 (14.1 kb/s)
(average 14.1 kb/s)


When a document fails to print, smbclient produces the
arguments passed to smbprint.sysv are:

Arguments = jumbo-38110 root  1  b
/SPARE/APPLICATION/LOCATIONS/invt/mkt/1S20050213455463

Output from smbclient:

added interface ip=192.168.1.122 bcast=192.168.1.255
nmask=255.255.255.0
session setup failed: Call timed out: server did not
respond after 20000 milliseconds

My reasoning so far is this:

1.	Since I can print half the time, there is nothing
wrong with the networking or name resolution.

2.	Since I can print some of the time SMB printing is
set up correctly.

3.	Would it help if I increase the timeout period for
setting up NETBIOS Sessions, how can I do this?


What could cause the session setup to fail sometimes? 
Can you suggest possible causes and remedies please? 
Will my increasing the time out period help? Please
post any replies to the above newsgroup, or send them
to me at this address.

Tks & Rgds,

Joseph Carri


		
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