samba - Feb 2023 - Unable to add Point and Print printers to clients with Windows 8.1 and up

Hi all,

thank you Stefan for your suggestions. At least the idea with trying a different
driver for once seems to have lead me somewhere!
> On 28. Feb 2023, at 09:04, Stefan Kania via samba <samba at
lists.samba.org> wrote:
> Did you "disable" the the GPO! Normaly you set GPOs to
"enable" to set what the GPO should do, here it must be
"disabled"
Yep, that's what I did. I did so by setting the value in the Registry
myself, just to be extra 100% sure it is what it should be per the article.
Even though it shouldn't make any difference as per my last email -- I was
working as a Domain and Local Admin the entire time on purpose to rule this kind
of stuff out.
> So maybe you try a standard driver to see if the problem is the driver and
not your settings.

This seems to have hit it on the head. When I use one of the Brother or HP
drivers inside your bundle, everything works again like nothing was ever
wrong...
Matter of fact: It really just works with either driver and really just
doesn't with the Sharp one. Like for the other person asking on the mailing
list in 2021.

What I find a little suspicious: For any driver I have provided in the past
(included the Sharp one) it opened a dialog box where it copied the driver onto
the client's disk.
It didn't do that for either driver you provided and said "Downloading
driver..." instead without additional dialog boxes. Now, could this mean it
installed drivers from Windows Update instead? "Downloading" for
"copying over the network" sounds a little dated, even for Microsoft.
Maybe I'm just being too paranoid and grasping at straws... "It's
doing my head in!" :-)

Does the Sharp driver specifically not working narrow it down to some other GPO
and/or setting I can take so that my newer clients will accept it? Keep in mind:
The environment in use right now is using Windows 7 and that continues to work
like a charm - A very insecure, outdated charm, of course. Replacing the MFC
soon is also out of the question.

Any other suggestion?

Thanks for all the help so far.

--
Sincerely
Thomas Keppler

Hi all,

the driver hint really helped. The PostScript drivers opposed to the PCL6 ones
work fine.
However, isn't this a little strange? What sets these apart in ways that
concern the print _server_?

Funnily enough, not even the "SHARP UD3" driver in PCL6 mode has
worked. Only the PS version of the original driver (UD3 is PCL6 only).

Big caveat: I still need to test if something useful comes out of the printer if
I do it that way, I'm not near the printer's location right now.
It's installable now though which is so far so good.
This also made it possible to setup printing defaults which is useful. Windows
10 works like a charm, too.

Another neat trick I found by searching the web, that _hasn't_ helped in my
case but might be worth a shot for a lost soul browsing the archives years from
now:
> There is a little trick for Canon, Sharp, Konica Minolta printers that
makes a system think that the driver is package-aware. To do it, open the
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Enviroments\Windowsx64\Drivers\?\Driver
name\ branch of the registry on the Print Server and change the value of 
PrinterDriverAttributes key for the specific driver by adding 1 to the current
value. In my case, the attribute value has been equal to 5, and I have changed
it to 6. The same has to be done for the driver attribute in
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Enviroments\Windowsx NT
x86\Drivers?\Driver name\. After the restart, Canon network printers start to
connect without any warnings.
Source: https://woshub.com/unable-to-install-print-driver-after-kb3170455/

It works exactly like it is described above (you need to use regedit.exe on a
Windows client with RSAT tools and connect to your print server) but that also
didn't change anything for me.

Any ideas what could cause this difference between those two driver types? Is
there some Windows protocol magic going on or something that is disabled by
Samba?

More questions than answers -- but at least a workaround, it seems. I'll
keep you posted if this is a viable workaround for now.

--
Sincerely
Thomas Keppler
> On 28. Feb 2023, at 20:57, Thomas Keppler <winfr34k at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> thank you Stefan for your suggestions. At least the idea with trying a
different driver for once seems to have lead me somewhere!
> 
>> On 28. Feb 2023, at 09:04, Stefan Kania via samba <samba at
lists.samba.org> wrote:
>> Did you "disable" the the GPO! Normaly you set GPOs to
"enable" to set what the GPO should do, here it must be
"disabled"
> 
> Yep, that's what I did. I did so by setting the value in the Registry
myself, just to be extra 100% sure it is what it should be per the article.
> Even though it shouldn't make any difference as per my last email -- I
was working as a Domain and Local Admin the entire time on purpose to rule this
kind of stuff out.
> 
>> So maybe you try a standard driver to see if the problem is the driver
and not your settings.
> 
> 
> This seems to have hit it on the head. When I use one of the Brother or HP
drivers inside your bundle, everything works again like nothing was ever
wrong...
> Matter of fact: It really just works with either driver and really just
doesn't with the Sharp one. Like for the other person asking on the mailing
list in 2021.
> 
> What I find a little suspicious: For any driver I have provided in the past
(included the Sharp one) it opened a dialog box where it copied the driver onto
the client's disk.
> It didn't do that for either driver you provided and said
"Downloading driver..." instead without additional dialog boxes. Now,
could this mean it installed drivers from Windows Update instead?
"Downloading" for "copying over the network" sounds a little
dated, even for Microsoft. Maybe I'm just being too paranoid and grasping at
straws... "It's doing my head in!" :-)
> 
> Does the Sharp driver specifically not working narrow it down to some other
GPO and/or setting I can take so that my newer clients will accept it? Keep in
mind: The environment in use right now is using Windows 7 and that continues to
work like a charm - A very insecure, outdated charm, of course. Replacing the
MFC soon is also out of the question.
> 
> Any other suggestion?
> 
> Thanks for all the help so far.
> 
> --
> Sincerely
> Thomas Keppler
>