[Samba] Print Management Blank After Working for Years

[Rowland Penny]

On 23/01/2023 20:17, Aaron de Bruyn via samba wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> 
> This caught me by surprise.
> 
> I set up printing through Samba over a year ago for better audit logging and ease of isolating printers on to their own VLAN.
> It's been working well for a long time.
> 
> A month ago I had problems when I upgraded to a newer version of Samba and got things straightened out.
> 
> It's been humming along for about a month now with no issues on ~27 member servers.
> 
> Last week, one of the local copier companies decided to come out and start replacing copiers with no notice at 5 offices.
> 
> I pulled up Print Management, loaded the correct drivers, and those 5 offices were done. Pretty simple.
> 
> Today, they showed up to replace copiers at 8 more locations.
> 
> I pulled up print management, and all the servers are blank. Nothing listed under printers, drivers, ports or forms—even first 5 offices I set up. Printing is working properly at those offices, and from a new machine, I can connect, automatically install the print driver, and print stuff.
> 
> It's like the Print Management console is gorked.
> 
> Here are a few things I noticed/tried:
> - All machines are running Samba from Debian: 2:4.17.3+dfsg-3~bpo11+1. Tried upgrading one machine to 2:4.17.4+dfsg-3~bpo11+1 with no success
> - Ports, Drivers, and Forms are populated correctly when I right-click the Samba server and go to "properties" in the print management console.
> - Trying to right-click on Printers and choosing "add" in print management, and on the very last step it complains a printer with that name already exists
> - Tried switching from 'rpc_server:spoolss' = external and 'rpc_daemon:spoolssd' = fork to 'rpcd_spoolss:idle_seconds' = 300 and 'rpcd_spoolss:num_workers' = 5 with no success
> 
> Running the RPC commands manually appears to work:
> 
> root at ussnisdnas01:# rpcclient localhost <http://localhost> -U "REDACTED\adebruyn" -c "enumdrivers"
> Password for [REDACTED\adebruyn]:
> 
> [Windows NT x86]
> Printer Driver Info 1:
> Driver Name: [HP Universal Printing PCL 6]
> 
> 
> [Windows x64]
> Printer Driver Info 1:
> Driver Name: [HP Universal Printing PCL 6]
> 
> root at ussnisdnas01:# rpcclient localhost <http://localhost> -U "REDACTED\adebruyn" -c 'setdriver "ussnisdcpr01" "HP Universal Printing PCL 6"'
> Password for [REDACTED\adebruyn]:
> Successfully set ussnisdcpr01 to driver HP Universal Printing PCL 6.
> root at ussnisdnas01:# rpcclient localhost <http://localhost> -U "REDACTED\adebruyn" -c "enumprinters"
> Password for [REDACTED\adebruyn]:
> flags:[0x800000]
> name:[\\LOCALHOST <http://LOCALHOST>\ussnisdcpr01]
> description:[\\LOCALHOST <http://LOCALHOST>\ussnisdcpr01,HP Universal Printing PCL 6,ussnisdcpr01]
> comment:[ussnisdcpr01]
> 
> root at ussnisdnas01:#
> 
> Unfortunately, manually setting the driver doesn't get printing working. It appears to try to install the driver and then says "The print processor does not exist".
> I can uninstall the existing drivers for the "old" copier and reconnect to it just fine.
> 
> I cranked up debug logging to 8 and don't see anything in /var/log/samba/log.rpcd_spoolss (or the old /var/log/samba/log.spoolssdd).
> 
> Any thoughts on what I can look into next?
> 
> -A

I think you are looking at this from the wrong end, Microsoft appears to 
be having problems with printers, It seems to have something to do with 
'PrintNightmare'. I seem to remember one cure was to totally remove the 
printer drivers and reload them, though this may not work.

Rowland