[Samba] Q: Samba & CUPS & Win Print Processor

Albrecht Dreß albrecht.dress at lios-tech.com
Thu Sep 20 14:31:44 GMT 2007


Hi Martin:

Am 20.09.2007 16:13:50 schrieb(en) Martin Zielinski:
> there is currently no way to use the functionality of print  
> processors with samba - shared printers.
> 
> The reason lies in the way windows handles print processors that are  
> provided by servers. There is no way to let windows use them locally.  
> They *MUST* be executed on the server (normally they receive EMF  
> format and play around with it, and give the resulting EMF to the  
> driver).
> 
> Of course they currently can not run on the server so samba only  
> reports to have winprint installed.

I see - this is obviously an *extremely* bad situation, because this  
basically means that we cannot migrate from a Win server to Samba  
/without/ loosing important functionality for the Win users!

> I've even tried to use a print processor together with wine - but no  
> success. Help and ideas welcome.

A workaround seems to be contacting the cups queue via ipp directly  
(i.e. add an URL network printer at  
http://your.cups.box:631/printers/queue), but then you have to manually  
add the printer driver.  In this case, the "print processor" seems to  
run locally on the client, and everything is fine.

However, having more than a few clients, and more than a few printers,  
this approach for installation is extremely time-consuming and  
therefore unacceptable.  Or does anyone know a way to automatise the  
client driver installation, perhaps with a script/batch, which would be  
as simple as the "right-click printer on the Samba box and say connect"  
approach?

Cheers, Albrecht.


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