samba - Jul 1997 - How to write a printcap entry for remote printer

I am sharing some printers attached to Win95 boxes, and would like to be
able to do more than connect from Linux with smbclient and print via
translate.  I would like to be able to specify a printcap entry for these
so as to be able to print from pine or lynx or Netscape (when I get X
running here at work).  

I haven't found anything in Samba docs or LDP docs yet to tell me how to
write such an entry on my Linux box for a queue on a remote Samba printer.
Can anyone point me to something that will describe this?

Many thanks,

Chuck Bearden
cbearden@hpl.lib.tx.us

On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Chuck Bearden wrote:
> 
> I am sharing some printers attached to Win95 boxes, and would like to be
> able to do more than connect from Linux with smbclient and print via
> translate.  I would like to be able to specify a printcap entry for these
> so as to be able to print from pine or lynx or Netscape (when I get X
> running here at work).  
	Dear Chuck, I've recently installed RedHat Linux 4.2 (Biltmore) in
my server, and it does exactly what you want out of the box!!!! This is an
extension to the very good printtool utility that comes with every RedHat
distribution. If don't like RedHat or do not have Linux, I suggest
installing one to see how it works, and than copy and if necessary adapt
the scripts. There isn't any binary, so you could easily use them in any
Unix system.

	Hope this helps!

	Celso.

Stolen from an Internet user:
"f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng !"

------------------------------------------------------
| Celso Kopp Webber                                  |
| e-mail: celsinho@inf.ufsc.br                       |
|                                                    |
| Federal University of Santa Catarina               |
| Florianopolis-SC         Brazil                    |
------------------------------------------------------

On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Chuck Bearden wrote:
> 
> I am sharing some printers attached to Win95 boxes, and would like to be
> able to do more than connect from Linux with smbclient and print via
> translate.  I would like to be able to specify a printcap entry for these
> so as to be able to print from pine or lynx or Netscape (when I get X
> running here at work).  
> 
> I haven't found anything in Samba docs or LDP docs yet to tell me how
to
> write such an entry on my Linux box for a queue on a remote Samba printer.
it will depend on the printer you have attached.  i spent yesterday 
evening connecting an HP laserjet 4L to a FreeBSD box.  the hp is a pcl 
printer.  if you print to it in text, it comes out with garbage.  we had 
to supress the (text) header page, and suppress the last form-feed, so it 
didn't print a garbage header (wasted page no 1) and print a separator 
page (wasted page no 2).

as far as i understand any of this, you (and i) will need a separate 
printcap entry for the pine (text-only) people, and a pre-processing 
command, that turns text into pcl, and feeds the data to the same 
physical printer (well, actually, the same printer queue on which one 
printer is attached).

not that i know where to _obtain_ such commands from, or exactly how to 
set it up.  please keep in touch, as the cafe needs pine users to print 
out, too, so i'll be tracking this down, as well.


luke

Chuck Bearden <cbearden@rothut.hpl.lib.tx.us> wrote:

: I am sharing some printers attached to Win95 boxes, and would like to be
: able to do more than connect from Linux with smbclient and print via
: translate.  I would like to be able to specify a printcap entry for these
: so as to be able to print from pine or lynx or Netscape (when I get X
: running here at work).  

: I haven't found anything in Samba docs or LDP docs yet to tell me how to
: write such an entry on my Linux box for a queue on a remote Samba printer.
: Can anyone point me to something that will describe this?

I don't know if this will help but I have this: a printer connected to a 
Windoze 95 machine and that has an entry in my Linux box's /etc/printcap.
Anyone can use standard BSD style printing to print to the Windows 95's
printer (BSD printing request gets send through SMB to the Windows 95 box).

My /etc/printcap entry is:

laserjet4l|remote-smbprinter printing to Windows 95's LaserJet 4L:\
        :lp=/dev/null:\
        :if=/usr/local/sbin/smbprint:\
        :af=/var/spool/lpd/remote/laserjet4l/acct:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/remote/laserjet4l:\
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:

The key here is the line that says "if=/usr/local/sbin/smbprint".
smbprint is a shell script supplied with the Samba distribution. I think
you'll find a document in the examples directory of the distribution
that explain how to set this up.

Let me know if you need more information on how to set this up and I'll
be glad to help.

Good luck.

E.-

-- 

Eloy A. Paris
Information Technology Department
Rockwell Automation de Venezuela
Telephone: +58-2-9432311 Fax: +58-2-9430323