Hello.
I understand that Samba allows PC's running Windows OS to see
Unix computers (files and printers) as part of its network
neighborhood. My question is whether Samba will also allow UNIX
systems to see and use Windows files and printers as well.
We mostly have WindowsNT computers in our lab and we have one SGI
Octane. Since we already have set up and mainly use our PC resources (HP
deskjets and laserjet) we'd rather not buy another printer (and a more
expensive postscript printer at that) for local connection to the SGI
computer if we can print over the local network. We have so far been
forced to FTP image files from SGI to PC.
Thanks very much.
Meinrado Samala
Faculty research assistant
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
1-301-405-0373
FAX 1-301-405-9376
[Meinrado Samala <samala@wam.umd.edu>]> My question is whether Samba will also allow UNIX systems to see and > use Windows files and printers as well.What you need to do is set up a print queue on the IRIX box which forwards jobs to the NT box, then share the queue with the other Unix boxes, same as any other queue. I don't remember the specifics of IRIX print queues (something funky with Impressario I guess) but if there's a way to define a pipe backend, that's what you need to do. The pipe should lead to a shell script that invokes 'smbclient' with the necessary arguments. With an lpd-derived print subsystem, the conventional way to accomplish this is to define a printer with /dev/null as the print device and the smbclient-calling script as the input filter ("if="). Hack, hack. Note that smbclient does not seem to have a non-interactive non-command-line method to input a password, so if your print share requires a password this will of necessity show up in your 'ps' output. My "solution" here was to create a dedicated print job account on the NT domain and just use that -- no normal user accounts were harmed in the making of this movie.... Alternatively, of course, you can bypass Samba entirely and set up an lpd service on the NT server. I think this comes with the resource kit but I'm not sure, it's been awhile. I don't remember if it works well or not (but since when did any Berkeley-derived print daemon actually work *well*? <g>) Peter
Meinrado Samala wrote:> > Hello. > > I understand that Samba allows PC's running Windows OS to see > Unix computers (files and printers) as part of its network > neighborhood. My question is whether Samba will also allow UNIX > systems to see and use Windows files and printers as well. > We mostly have WindowsNT computers in our lab and we have one SGI > Octane. Since we already have set up and mainly use our PC resources (HP > deskjets and laserjet) we'd rather not buy another printer (and a more > expensive postscript printer at that) for local connection to the SGI > computer if we can print over the local network. We have so far been > forced to FTP image files from SGI to PC. > Thanks very much.Samba provides some utilities that can be used to achieve what you want - the smbclient program can be used as part of a Unix print filter, to transfer jobs to an SMB shared printer. However, this is not the approach that I would recommend for this. Your SGI will produce output to print in PostScript format. Simply transferring the job via SMB won't solve the underlying problem that your printers will then throw up an "invalid personality" error. With network connected HP equipment, I'd get and install LPRng and it's associated print filter, ifhp. With these, you can set up a print spool on the SGI that will receive PostScript, convert it into PCL suitable for your printer, and than transfer it directly across the network to the printer. The ifhp HOWTO has information on how to chain ifhp and ghostscript to translate PostScript -> PCL, and the LPRng HOWTO has information on setting up LPRng to talk to a networked HP printer (they simply listen for jobs on port 9100). Check out www.lprng.com for more info. HTH Mike
Meinrado Samala wrote:> > Hello. > > I understand that Samba allows PC's running Windows OS to see > Unix computers (files and printers) as part of its network > neighborhood. My question is whether Samba will also allow UNIX > systems to see and use Windows files and printers as well. > We mostly have WindowsNT computers in our lab and we have one SGI > Octane. Since we already have set up and mainly use our PC resources (HP > deskjets and laserjet) we'd rather not buy another printer (and a more > expensive postscript printer at that) for local connection to the SGI > computer if we can print over the local network. We have so far been > forced to FTP image files from SGI to PC. > Thanks very much.You can use any printer that is postscript directly using the smbprint script (see the comments on how to use it). If you want to use a non- postscript printer, you must have a driver on IRIX for that printer. Install the printer as a local parallel printer. I then modified the interface file to use smbclient. If you want specific details of the mods send me email. I have this working for a DeskJet 850C in my lab. -- =====================================================================Herb Lewis Silicon Graphics Networking Engineer 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy MS-510 Strategic Software Organization Mountain View, CA 94043-1351 herb@sgi.com Tel: 650-933-2177 http://www.sgi.com Fax: 650-932-2177 ======================================================================