[Samba] Printer settings don't stick

Stephen Thomas flabdablet at gmail.com
Sun Jul 30 10:30:32 GMT 2006


Experienced programmer, Samba noob, CUPS noob; trying to use Ubuntu
6.06 Server as a print server for Windows XP clients on a home LAN.
Worked through the Howto and got point-and-print to work for my Canon
iP1200 (raw CUPS queue, and I used the Windows XP Add Printer Wizard
to upload the driver to the print$ share).

However, I can't persuade the printer driver to change the ink
cartridge mode from "auto-detect" (which is clearly not going to work,
given that Samba/CUPS provides no return data path from the printer
back to the client) to "black + color".  The dropdown menu stubbornly
remains on "auto-detect", and print jobs are always prepared for color
cartridge only.  I can change from portrait to landscape and back with
no problems.

Also, whenever the printer properties dialog is open, responses to
clicks in it are very very slow, and ethereal shows me a stupidly huge
amount of DCERPC request/response traffic between the XP box and Samba
(hundreds per second, with the same small set duplicated).

Questions for those kindly disposed to noobs:

1.  Does ntforms.tdb only store certain standard settings (page size,
orientation, whatever) or can it hold anything a Windows printer
driver cares to throw at it?

2.  Do I need to make ntforms.tdb writable by anybody other than root
(for example, should I set it to root:lpadmin rwxrwxr-x like the
directory where print$ is mapped)?

3.  Is that amount of DCERPC traffic normal, or is this likely to be a
bonehead Windows driver trying over and over again to read some kind
of status data back from the printer?

4.  Where should I be looking to find out how to decipher the DCERPC traffic?

Thanks for any insights - Stephen


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