[Samba] still having printer problems.

[Jay G. Scott]

greetings,

my hp 2605dn printer using samba as a print spooler from solaris 10
won't print from XP, 2000.  i've convinced myself that the windoze
boxes ship the print job off to the samba print spooler, but the
samba print spooler bitbuckets it.

samba 3.0.21b  (sun's)
solaris 10
printer = hp2605dn
windows xp, 2000.
using bsd protocol.

ping works everywhere, nslookup gives the right answers everywhere.
samba file shares work.  there is no firewall set up.  these
machines aren't on the internet, never have been, no plan to
put them there.

solaris "lp filename" works--the print comes out.

if i use the solaris smbclient i can put files to the printer
and they do print.

this works from the windows box:
echo hiya^L > \\solarishost\hp2605

i'm guessing that only works because it's not using samba.
or do i not know what i'm talking about.


on the windows box i can send print jobs (say, from word) and the printer status
box says they are spooling.  The jobs leave the window and
it looks like the print job worked.  but nothing comes out
of the printer--it looks like no bytes are sent to the printer.

test page printouts from the printer properties pulldown
do not work.  there is no indication of an
error on the windows side.  there is no indication of anything
getting into the queue on the solaris side, but it's possible
it's going by too fast--though i doubt it.

it really looks like samba on solaris is collecting the bytes
from the windows boxes and throwing them away.  i have a "switch"
(it's probably just a hub) but the lights to the printer don't flicker.
i never see anything in
lpstat -t
lpstat -o
should i?  this machine is the print spooler so would the file
go to the print spooler first and then to the printer?  if so,
the flickering lights tell me the file goes to the spooler and
is tossed out.  is there a way to check that?

there is no WINS server set up in the printer.  the printer
has a dns server, netmask, gateway....  and they are all
what i set them to be.

aahhh, there seems to be a cadre of people who think using cups
will fix this.  i have a very slight preference to fixing this
w/o cups just to prove i can get it right, but i'm willing to use
cups if that's what it takes.

j.