A while ago I looked into this and was told not to bother as it was a hack at best. Anyone shed any reliable info on creating a print server for windows nt -> vista clients both x86 and x46 for a few Canon and HP IP Printers.
Would this be reliable, are there any caveats or issues to be aware of?
Thanks! jlc
on 3-26-2009 10:16 AM Joseph L. Casale spake the following:
A while ago I looked into this and was told not to bother as it was a hack at best. Anyone shed any reliable info on creating a print server for windows nt -> vista clients both x86 and x46 for a few Canon and HP IP Printers.
Would this be reliable, are there any caveats or issues to be aware of?
Thanks! jlc
It just needs a working cups and samba install to get it working. I run several linux print servers for windows clients, including driver installs.
The only real problem I had was right before service pack 3 came out for XP. Some security update broke ALL my HP print drivers on the XP boxes. I fought with it for 3 weeks, and had to create cups print driver based packages for all the HP printers until SP3 magically fixed it. I never found out what caused it.
It just needs a working cups and samba install to get it working. I run several linux print servers for windows clients, including driver installs.
What/How do you handle authentication/perms for the printers?
The only real problem I had was right before service pack 3 came out for XP. Some security update broke ALL my HP print drivers on the XP boxes. I fought with it for 3 weeks, and had to create cups print driver based packages for all the HP printers until SP3 magically fixed it. I never found out what caused it.
Huh, that was my next question. It's trivial to add drivers for various windows platforms to my windows servers, and it appears you have done this as well. I will check out Samba's doc site to see what's involved in making a cups print driver based package.
Thanks! jlc
on 3-26-2009 11:32 AM Joseph L. Casale spake the following:
It just needs a working cups and samba install to get it working. I run several linux print servers for windows clients, including driver installs.
What/How do you handle authentication/perms for the printers?
The only real problem I had was right before service pack 3 came out for XP. Some security update broke ALL my HP print drivers on the XP boxes. I fought with it for 3 weeks, and had to create cups print driver based packages for all the HP printers until SP3 magically fixed it. I never found out what caused it.
Huh, that was my next question. It's trivial to add drivers for various windows platforms to my windows servers, and it appears you have done this as well. I will check out Samba's doc site to see what's involved in making a cups print driver based package.
Thanks! jlc
You can also add regular windows drivers and have the print queues set as raw. You add drivers the same way as windows servers. If printers require auth for their connections you can set that up in cups. If you want to have the actual print queues to require auth, I think you can do that also. You just set up the samba users and passwords to be the same as their windows NTLM credentials. You can even tie the samba printserver into a domain controlled by a windows domain controller and pass the auth around that way.
It is in the samba books. A lot of reading, but you can completely emulate a NT machine currently, and in samba 4 they are talking about emulating a full win 2000 type AD server.
On Mar 26, 2009, at 1:16 PM, "Joseph L. Casale" <JCasale@activenetwerx.com
wrote:
A while ago I looked into this and was told not to bother as it was a hack at best. Anyone shed any reliable info on creating a print server for windows nt -> vista clients both x86 and x46 for a few Canon and HP IP Printers.
Would this be reliable, are there any caveats or issues to be aware of?
Samba print sharing is more dependable then Samba file sharing in my opinion.
The windows driver directory PRINT$ can take a little work to get setup properly, but after it's setup right you install drivers there from a Windows client as if it were any other print server.
-Ross
The windows driver directory PRINT$ can take a little work to get setup properly, but after it's setup right you install drivers there from a Windows client as if it were any other print server.
Ross, Took the long ugly way around this and used the nix commands to import and assign drivers and its working fine. I am having a bit of an issue finding good docs on setting up perms for the cups printers exported by samba now. I assume you still use `lpadmin -p <name> -u allow:user1,user2` to manage access to the printers now?
If so, man page shows this also works with groups (good) but how do I set the specific perms such that users can mangle settings like choose a saddle stitcher (what level of permission is this)?
Thanks! jlc
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Joseph L. Casale -
Ross Walker -
Scott Silva