samba - May 2003 - Call for help with Samba Printing and WinNT

Hi [Samba]s

This is a call for some generous people to try out the process of
installation of a Samba printer on WinNT and WinNT Terminal Server
Edition. I am working through Kurt Pfeifle's HOWTO on Printing and CUPS
printing in Samba 3.0, and finding some issues with NT/TSE. It would be
good if we had some confirmation or otherwise of these problems so that
Kurt can update his HOWTO (this is expected to appear in the
documentation for Samba 3.0). If someone can do the same for Win2000 and
WinME, it would be great ? although I expect that these will not present
any problems.

Kurt has WinXP/Pro and I have WinXP/HE. Although there are rumours that
WinXP/HE gives networking problems, I found that as long as the
username/passwords were setup identically to those on the WinNT/TSE PDC
and on the Samba machines, there was no difficulty connecting to shares
and printers and even to MS-Exchange from the WinXP/HE machines. In fact
it was quite smooth (sorry-have to be honest).

I have setup samba 2.2.8a and CUPS 1.1.19pre4, and am working with
WinNT4SP6/TSE. The printers are HP laserjet 2100 (PCI/PS) and 6P/6MP
(PS) machines setup both as raw printers (for direct installation on
Win) and also using Foomatic+ljet4 driver for Linux printing and for
using cupsaddsmb.

Following Kurt's HOWTO, we can use the WinNT/TSE AddPrinter GUI to
install printer drivers into the Samba PRINT$ share for the raw
printers. They work fine on all machines. This means that Samba is
correctly setting up the driver files, and also the fake registry
entries that it puts in ntdrivers.tdb (note it is important to have all
Win administrator accounts and also root passwords defined in smbpasswd
for this to go through smoothly).

Continuing on, we can now try the Linux commandline method of installing
the printer driver. This relies on rpcclient to install the drivers. The
utility cupsaddsmb also uses this technique, so it is not essential to
use the somewhat long-winded commandline method, although it is an
excellent seat-of-the-pants way to get a feel for what is happening.
Although not essential, it is probably best to use the rpcclient from
the latest Samba 3.0 distribution as it has had a few bugs fixed.

Having successfully completed this installation, we go to a WinXP/HE
client. We see the driver mentioned against the printer properties. We
can click ?connect? to complete the installation. The printer now
appears in the printer folder and everything works wonderfully.

Now for the crunch. We go to the WinNT/TSE server and we can see the
driver mentioned against the printer properties. However when we click
?install? (equivalent to ?connect? on other Wins), it complains that
there is no suitable driver of that name on the PRINT$ share.

A hexdump of ntdrivers.tdb (and also rpclient ? enumdrivers 3) shows
that WinNT/TSE has added to the fake registry, in addition to the set of
driver filenames, a second set of the same filenames in a slightly
different order as ?dependent files?. It wasn't enough to use rpcclient
? adddriver with those additional filenames to overcome the problem. My
suspicion is that WinNT/TSE not only does things differently to other
Wins, but requires those differences to be present before it can accept
a driver (while WinXP/HE seems to be happy despite those differences).

Thus while we cannot install a driver using cupsaddsmb, we can do so
through the Win GUI interface, so all is not lost. We really would like
to confirm that others have this ?issue? in WinNT/TSE, and, perhaps more
importantly, whether it is present in WinNT and some other Wins that we
haven't yet tested.

Cheers and thanks, Ken

On Sun, 2003-05-25 at 03:15, Ken Sarkies wrote:
> Although there are rumours that
> WinXP/HE gives networking problems, I found that as long as the
> username/passwords were setup identically to those on the WinNT/TSE PDC
> and on the Samba machines, there was no difficulty connecting to shares
> and printers and even to MS-Exchange from the WinXP/HE machines. In fact
> it was quite smooth (sorry-have to be honest).
This is normal operation. XP HOME cannot participate as a domain member
and therefore one must duplicate the account. In some scenarios a
reconnect to shares will require additional attention at every login.
Windows machines have been sharing peer-to-peer style (no PDC) for a
long time, no reason to be so surprised by it.
> we can use the WinNT/TSE AddPrinter GUI to
> install printer drivers into the Samba PRINT$ share for the raw
> printers.
This is my preferred way of installing Windows native or manufacturer
supplied printer drivers.
> Continuing on, we can now try the Linux commandline method of installing
> the printer driver.
You have too much time on your hands<g>.
> Now for the crunch. We go to the WinNT/TSE server and we can see the
> driver mentioned against the printer properties. However when we click
> ?install? (equivalent to ?connect? on other Wins), it complains that
> there is no suitable driver of that name on the PRINT$ share.
Did you install an NT4 driver? Look at the "Additional Drivers" dialog
box for the printer in question for the versions listed.
> Thus while we cannot install a driver using cupsaddsmb, we can do so
> through the Win GUI interface, so all is not lost.
Cupsaddsmb, will not, AFAIK, install a raw printer (you mention above
you're working with a raw printer queue). When you assign a PPD to a
CUPS queue it is no longer a raw printer and that PPD must be associated
with either the CUPS or the Adobe PS drivers which must have already
been properly located.

Chris

> > Continuing on, we can now try the Linux commandline method of
installing
> > the printer driver.
> 
> You have too much time on your hands<g>.
yeah i did that once as well and you don't need to crap around with all that
typing.  you need to copy the files using windows explorer -> samba box
(samba share, winscp, ftp whatever) in the right place as specified by the
doc(may like a backup copy of the files you've collected from your windows
test page) so you can redo your adddriver as many times as you like).   all
that rpcclient stuff is a waste of time IMHO, but perhaps is good because it
makes you think and gives you a little experience using rpcclient if you
haven't before.
> This is normal operation. XP HOME cannot participate as a domain member
> and therefore one must duplicate the account. In some scenarios a
> reconnect to shares will require additional attention at every login.
> Windows machines have been sharing peer-to-peer style (no PDC) for a
> long time, no reason to be so surprised by it.
confirmation of XP Home being a crock.  can't talk to any windows domains
(took me a little while to figure out why a user couldn't get on when being
told he was sure he had XP Pro <sigh>)  :)

regards
Matthew

>> Did you install an NT4 driver? Look at the 
>> "Additional Drivers" dialog box for the printer
>> in question for the versions listed.
>The identical one that I installed under the GUI, 
>using the same driver files. The issue seems to be 
>with the registration in the tdbs, or even, dare I 
>say it, a problem in my samba installation.
I might have missed the beginning of this thread.
What versions of kernel, samba and cups are involved?

There seems to be a problem in rpcclient code 
preventing cupsaddsmb and rpcclient from adding
higher level drivers, especially obnoxious in 2.2.8a.
It was resolved as bug #82.


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>Thanks for your reply. I have been using the absolute 
>latest rpcclient from Samba 3 CVS, so I expect that 
>the bug is fixed. It installs the drivers but not 
>such that WinNT/TSE can use. However WinXP can use
>exactly the same ones. Apart from a feature (not 
>necessarily a bug) in rpcclient that WinNT/TSE 
>doesn't like, the only other possible thing I can 
>imagine is a problem with permissions in my 
>installation. However installation by Windows GUIs 
>from both WinNT/TSE and WinXP/HE under various 
>accounts work flawlessly for WinNT/TSE. Oh well, its 
>been fun chasing it up, but without intimate 
>knowledge of what WinNT/TSE wants I can't get much 
>more insight.
If you can forget the GUI for a moment perhaps you
can install the printer on the WinNT/TSE by a
work-around, which goes something like this:

System Panel -> Printers -> Add...
Local Printer, No automatic search
Create a new port of type Local Port
As Port name type "\\yoursamba\yourprinter"
Choose the driver from the assistent's list etc.

Sure downloading all drivers automatically is the
holy grail, but if the above procedure works (which
it mustn't necessarily), who cares?



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