samba - Feb 2008 - Printing samba, cups and legacy 16 bit applications

hello everybody,
I have come to a dead end.
I have successfully configured cups and samba to print from windows with
automated drivers download.
It works perfectly, but for one little problem, most of the printing here in
my company are reports printed by the ERP software, which has been developed
by ouserlves some 12 years ago in (oohh sucks) Visual basic 3.

The problem is:
Every single application prints successfully except apps developed in Vb3.
I have developed a wonderful test app with amazing 3 lines of code.

event form load
cmdialog1.action=5 'opens windows common dialog for choosing printer
printer.print time 'prints time in the upper left corner of the page
printer.enddoc 'finishes print job
end

the same app built with vb6 prints ok, built with vb3 does not print, and
what's worse, does not generate any kind of error, the job simply disapears.
worse than that. if i check the "print to file" option of the ps
driver,
save the file with whatever name, copy it to my cups/samba server and print
it with lpr, it prints, either from vb3 or vb6.

i believe the problem is with the 8.3 filename restriction of vb3 and the
smbprn.XXXXXX filename of samba spool directory although i`m not certain of
who really creates this file, the app, the windows driver or samba itself.

i have pcap files of the network from the moment i click the ok button in
the printing dialog, But i could not make any sense out of them.

if someone could be of any help!

tks a lot

Ciro Souza

> hello everybody,
> I have come to a dead end.
> I have successfully configured cups and samba to print from windows with
> automated drivers download.
> It works perfectly, but for one little problem, most of the printing here
> in
> my company are reports printed by the ERP software, which has been
> developed
> by ouserlves some 12 years ago in (oohh sucks) Visual basic 3.
>
> The problem is:
> Every single application prints successfully except apps developed in Vb3.
> I have developed a wonderful test app with amazing 3 lines of code.
>
> event form load
> cmdialog1.action=5 'opens windows common dialog for choosing printer
> printer.print time 'prints time in the upper left corner of the page
> printer.enddoc 'finishes print job
> end
>
> the same app built with vb6 prints ok, built with vb3 does not print, and
> what's worse, does not generate any kind of error, the job simply
> disapears.
> worse than that. if i check the "print to file" option of the ps
driver,
> save the file with whatever name, copy it to my cups/samba server and
> print
> it with lpr, it prints, either from vb3 or vb6.
>
> i believe the problem is with the 8.3 filename restriction of vb3 and the
> smbprn.XXXXXX filename of samba spool directory although i`m not certain
> of
> who really creates this file, the app, the windows driver or samba itself.
>
> i have pcap files of the network from the moment i click the ok button in
> the printing dialog, But i could not make any sense out of them.
>
> if someone could be of any help!
>
> tks a lot
>
> Ciro Souza
>
>
Ciro,

It's been quite a while since I had to do this, but if I remember right,
with Windows 2000 and Windows XP clients running most 16 bit applications,
you'll have to "capture" a local LPT port to your network printer
in order
to get the application to print.

Run the following at the DOS prompt at the client workstation:

net use LPT2:  \\servername\shared-printer-name

Then from the 16-bit application, print to LPT2

Jim