Hello fellow Samba users,
I am attempting to serve NT4 printer drivers from a Samba 2.2.0 server
running on AIX 4.3.2. I have configured my smb.conf per the
PRINTER_DRIVER2.txt and while I can indeed deliver drivers to NT4 clients
via the APW, the user interaction is not the same as with a real NT4 print
server. First is a fragment from my smb.conf relevant to print$ share and
a target printer: (Note: the case I use in the email is the exact case of
all names in the .conf or in the file system)
[print$]
path = /usr/local/samba/shares/drivers
read only = yes
browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
[EngrSDPS]
printing = BSD
printer = misprt7
print command = /usr/bin/rm -f /tmp/printlog; /usr/bin/cat %s > \
/tmp/printlog
path = /usr/local/samba/shares/officedocs/corp
guest ok = yes
printable = yes
printer driver = HP DesignJet 750C/PS
min print space = 4000
I have created the directory structure /usr/local/samba/shares/drivers/W32X86
and populated it with the drivers for this specific HP printer. All
directories are either mode 755 or 777 and the 4 driver files are mode 644.
Assume the netbios name of the server is stuff. When I attempt to define
\\stuff\EngrSDPS with the APW the error window appears that announces that
the print server does not have a valid driver for an HP DesignJet 750C/PS
printer installed. Do you want to install a driver?
When I elect to install I pick HP, then HP DesignJet 750C/PS from the lists
presented in the APW that are derived from ntprint.inf. When the APW asks
for media I can enter \\stuff\print$ in the browse window and drill down
into W32X86 and select HP_750_1.PPD and the APW finishes the install
correctly, including the three other required files I am serving, namely {
PSCRIPT.DLL, PSCRIPT.HLP, PSCRPTUI.DLL }. The drivers are absolutely
correctly installed and I can print Word docs from NT4 using the EngrSDPS
definition and I can capture the spooled files and they are indeed
Postscript. BTW: This project is not meant to really print to an HP
printer but its purpose is to capture the spooled files for post-processing
through Acrobat Distiller server to produce PDF versions. We are doing
DOC->PS->PDF for web serving compound documents to non-Windows
clients. That particular driver is one of a number we are testing. All of
this works as advertised except that the user must browse the driver share
and navigate down until he finds the driver to complete the
installation. What I want is for the APW to correctly detect that the
driver is present in print$ and grab it and all of its dependent files just
the way it would and does with a real NT4 print server. I don't want the
users to see anything different when they define this printer than they do
with the hundreds of other printers we make available on our net. They
should not even know about print$.
Either my smb.conf is incorrect or I am expecting too much from this
release and the former is the more likely. My next approach is to go into
the source for spoolss and see if I can learn more about the interaction of
smbd with the APW. I have also tried changing the path = expression to:
path = /usr/local/samba/shares/drivers/W32X86 but the results are the same.
Can anyone shed any light on this unexpected behavior? I think the
dialogue should be transparent to the user and while with the proper
instruction the printer will get defined, it is not as friendly as we would
like it to be.
Thanks in advance for your help. What a superb piece of craftsmanship is
Samba. :-)
Regards,
Will Schmidt
SW Engineer/Consultant
Kipe & Associates currently on assignment @ Freightliner LLC
Portland, OR
(541) 462-3160
(541) 462-3899 fax
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On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, T. William Schmidt wrote:> Hello fellow Samba users, > > I am attempting to serve NT4 printer drivers from a Samba 2.2.0 serveryou definitley want Samba 2.2.1a (maybe even get the latest SAMBA_2_2 cds)> running on AIX 4.3.2. I have configured my smb.conf per the > PRINTER_DRIVER2.txt and while I can indeed deliver drivers to NT4 clients > via the APW, the user interaction is not the same as with a real NT4 printSee the updated Printing chapter in the Samba-HOWTO-Collection.pdf file in the 2.2.1a distribution. Don't use the 'printer driver' parameter in smb.conf. It is deprecated.> this works as advertised except that the user must browse the driver > share and navigate down until he finds the driver to complete the > installation.I don't understand what you mean here. Do you mean the user who is connecting to the printer? Ahh....I'll bet I understand. ok. don't use 'printer driver'. Re-read the printing chapter in the HOWTO collection (PRINTER_DRIVER2.txt is outdated). Upgrade to 2.2.1a. Now install the drivers on the Samba server. Don't just copy the driver files to the [print$] share manually. If I had guessed wrong, give me some more details on your exact problem. I'm a little confused by your description as it is. cheers, jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------- www.samba.org SAMBA Team jerry_at_samba.org www.plainjoe.org jerry_at_plainjoe.org --"I never saved anything for the swim back." Ethan Hawk in Gattaca--
Hello Jerry,>you definitley want Samba 2.2.1a (maybe even get the latest SAMBA_2_2 >cds)I have not downloaded 2.2.1a nor read the docs yet, but I will ASAP. However...>Don't use the 'printer driver' parameter in smb.conf. >It is deprecated....this seems counterintuitive, to deprecate the printer driver property. How else will the Add Printer Wizard (APW) on the client PC know which driver to (automatically) grab? Let me restate the scenario with a little more detail. We have 300+ document authors using Word and Excel to create compound docs containing text, photographic images and fragments of CAD drawings. We have defined a Samba printer share EngrSDPS and associated that share name with the HP printer HP DesignJet 750C/PS with the printer driver = property. We will instruct each author to define with the APW the printer EngrSDPS so that his PC has the driver we wish to use to generate the Postscript intermediate files. By replacing the standard lpr command with our own Perl program in the printer command = property, capture the spool files and send them off for Distiller post-processing. Without something like printer driver = HP DesignJet 750C/PS in smb.conf, there is no way for the APW to know which driver we want to download. Yes, I know one can manually browse any media one has access to that contains drivers, including a Samba print$ share, like the one I articulated in my original post. But the point is to automate grabbing the driver files just as a standard, vanilla NT4 print server would do. How I got the driver in the first place installed on a test PC running NT4 was to simply select a real printer share from our production NT printer environment, define the relevant HP printer and the APW downloaded the driver. I did not have to browse any file system for drivers. The printer I chose was visible in the Network Neighborhood as a function of its membership in the browse master list. I simple had to choose it and the APW knew exactly which driver to get, and it did. I then deleted that printer definition and created a new printer definition that referred to the Samba printer and exploited the fact that once NT4 downloads a driver it hangs on to it even if you delete the printer definition that uses that driver. That's ok for me running a proof-of-concept test but we desire an automated process for those 300 users. The next objective was to make the Samba server behave the same way, but instead of selecting it from a browse list, I am doing \\netbiosName\EngrSDPS expecting the APW to grab the driver associated with the printer driver = property, but that part fails. I can then manually from the NT4 client APW browse the print$ share on the Samba server and select the driver, which does download. The real issue is, is this the best I can expect? I want the fully automated behavior from the Samba server that I get from the NT4 server and I don't want to disclose to PC users that they can get the driver from the print$, or any other similar Samba share. This should be totally transparent.>I don't understand what you mean here. Do you mean the user >who is connecting to the printer?Yes, the user I am talking about is the NT4 PC user attempting to define \\SambaNetbiosName\EngrSDPS. We don't want him to know anything about the structure of our Samba print$ share environment. We only want him to know the share name of our preferred printer and let the interaction between the client's APW and the Samba print server automatically resolve downloading the required driver files (See detail above). To be clear, when I refer to the APW I mean the Add Printer Wizard on the client PC. It presents to the PC user lists derived from ntprint.inf but if these particular users have to resort to list navigation, then I have failed to build a behavioral clone of a real NT4 print server, of which we have seven serving up about 200 printers and plotters.>If I had guessed wrong, give me some more details on your >exact problem. I'm a little confused by your description >as it is.If the latest version of Samba does not behave the way I have described, then I intend to examine the Samba source and see if I can patch it so that it does. My problem is managing my expectations and the expectations of others that I set. I expect a Samba print server to behave exactly the way an NT4 print server does, and when it does not, I am not sure if it is my inadequate implementation of smb.conf or that Samba lacks the exact NT4 functionality I am describing. Thanks again for your help. I hope I have explained the problem better this time so that you can tell me whether any Samba implementation can do it the way we desire.>cheers, jerry > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > www.samba.org SAMBA Team jerry_at_samba.org > www.plainjoe.org jerry_at_plainjoe.org > --"I never saved anything for the swim back." Ethan Hawk in Gattaca-- > > >-- >To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the >instructions: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/sambaRegards, Will Schmidt SW Engineer/Consultant Kipe & Associates currently on assignment @ Freightliner LLC Portland, OR (541) 462-3160 (541) 462-3899 fax -------------- next part -------------- HTML attachment scrubbed and removed