[Samba] How to backup/restore printer settings?

[Ryan Suarez]

Look at the tdbbackup utility included with samba.  Although, I had an 
incident once (corrupt tdbs) and restoring from this didn't work for me.

I've got a dedicated print server.  Finally resorted to stopping samba 
in the middle of the night (when no-one is using it) and backing-up the 
entire instance, to ensure a good clean backup.

tdb information is listed here:
http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/install.html#tdbdocs

On 10-11-29 05:54 PM, Rob Moser wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> We have a problem with our samba-based print server (a redhat EL
> machine, running samba 3.2.8) occasionally getting corrupt
> ntprinters.tdb files.  To combat it, I've been keeping nightly backups
> of the file, and restoring the latest whenever it crashes.  This
> _almost_ works.  When I restore the file, some of the printer settings -
> such as which driver it is using - seem to restore fine.  But some
> others - such as Printer Status Notification, to pick one at random from
> the Device Settings tab - seem to reset to default values.
>
> Are these settings stored in a different database?  When I make changes
> to them through the Windows interface, the timestamp on the
> ntprinters.tdb file changes, and not much else (other than files I'd
> expect to change regularly anyways.)  Is there a way to save and restore
> the printer settings (in some usefully programmatic way for a whole
> bunch of printers, rather than manually wading through a bunch of clicky
> windows re-doing them all one-by-one...)
>
> Thanks for any assistance,
>
>      - rob.