samba - Aug 2006 - PrintPreview extremely slow with Samba network printers

I am using Microsoft .NET (2.0) PrintPreviewDialog to 
preview reports, and all works well when the Windows 
default printer is set to a local printer or a 
network printer on a Windows server, but if I set it 
to a Samba network printer, it slows down to a 
crawl.  With a Windows server network printer, it
takes about 10 seconds to render 100 pages.  With a 
Samba network printer, it takes over 5 minutes!

I can see that the preview control is generating 
heavy network traffic (5-6% of a 1GB network
connection) continuously throughout the 5 minutes 
it takes to generate the preview, which probably 
is why it is so slow.

My environment:
Workstation: 3.2 GHz Dual Xeon, 1GB RAM, 1GB NIC, 
OS: WinXP SP2
Server: Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 1GB NIC, 
OS: RH ES 3.x
Samba version: Samba 3.0.9.
The printer is a HP LaserJet 4200N.  
I have tried different printer drivers, 
printers and Samba servers + versions.

I am hoping there is a setting or similar in 
Samba that would resolve this.

My current smb.conf:

[global]
   Netbios name = main-lin5
   workgroup = acme
   os level = 33
   security = user
   server string = Samba Server
   hosts allow = 10. 127.
   hide unreadable = yes
   browseable = yes 
   encrypt passwords = yes
   
   add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -c 'Machine
account' -d /dev/null -g 100 -s /bin/false -M %u

   wins support = yes
   create mask = 0660
   directory mask = 0770

# Start of Lock specific settings
	oplocks = no
	level2 oplocks = no
	strict locking = no
# End of Lock specific settings

   printcap name = /etc/printcap
   load printers = yes
	 use client driver = yes

   printing = lprng

   log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
   log level = 1

   max log size = 0

   socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192
SO_SNDBUF=8192

   dns proxy = no 

#============================ Share Definitions
=============================[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   writable = yes

 [netlogon]
   comment = Network Logon Service
   path = /d1/home/netlogon
   guest ok = no 
   writable = no
   write list = @mis
   share modes = no

[printers]
   comment = All Printers
   path = /var/spool/samba
   browseable = yes 
   guest ok = no
   printable = yes

[tmp]
   comment = Temporary file space
   path = /tmp
   read only = no
   public = yes

<snip> (more disk shares...) 

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Lars


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Some more data:

I tried adding the samba printer to a Windows server
and share it from there, and this works just fine
(e.g. "\\main-lin1\mis-laser on main-win1" [where
main-lin1 is a linux server and main-win1 is a windows
server]).  

I could setup a Windows server like this for all samba
printers, but that kind of defeats the purpose of
using Samba...

I also used tcpdump to capture the traffic generated
during the print preview, and the capture file for
generating a preview of 100 almost blank pages was
over 1GB of SMB traffic!! I am not familiar enough
with the SMB/NetBIOS protocols to decipher what is
going on, though.

Does anybody have a clue as to what could be causing
this behavior??

Thanks,
Lars

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