samba for printing

[Fred Martin_1]

I've got an HP-UX 11 system here, and need to be able to print to existing printer shares on a single Windows 2003 server.

Samba appears to be on my unix system already; I'm assuming that the /etc/opt/samba/smb.conf file is the correct config file.

At present I don't need Samba to do anything except make those Win2003 printer shares available to my unix printers. Since it's a database that's printing, and not users, I don't even care about authentication for printing, somthing generic would suffice. No users log into unix.

I know Samba can do much more, but I need a fast track to getting just the SMB printing thing running.

Can anyone provide me with some assistance, a top-level list of steps maybe?

I have the O'Reilly 'Using Samba' book and I'm currently reading what seems appropriate but even if you can point me to relevant stuff in that book, it would be great.

This is a small step in a bigger project, I -need- to shut down a dying NT4 server which is currently sharing those printers. Unix gets to them now via a very old version of FacetWin, which can't talk to Win2003.

Thanks,

Fred

[Fred Martin_1]

getting this message when trying to print from unix; where do i get info on error messages?

error code 127 in request sambatest-3231 on printer sambatest

[Fred Martin_1]

Are the smbd and nmbd services required for smbclient or are they just used if I want to serve anything from unix? I'm not, I only want to sent print jobs to windows shared printers.

[Tim Nelson]

couple other ideas.

W2K3 server use lpr. Then configure UX to send job to remote printer.

Put printers on network and print directly to them.

I try not to throw a whole nother layer of software to accomplish a simple task.

[Fred Martin_1]

For lpr, the printer on the windows box would have to be set up for lpr specifically, right? I'm trying to print to existing printers set up with TCP/IP or JetDirect ports.

[OldSchool]

you need to determine if they are ethernet cards, jetdirect cards, or some mix of the two.

if they are jetdirect, then simply set them up as network printers,

if they are ethernet, then it may be possible to set them up as remote printers w/o going thru windows....

if you really want to print via the windows box then all you should need to do is set them up as remote printers on the hp box. If you don't have Windows Services for UNIX installed, you'll need it. AFAIK, you don't need to set up additional ports on the Windows side to do this.

You shouldn't need SAMBA printing to do any of this...

[Fred Martin_1]

I assume you mean "Print Services for Unix" under "Windows Components / Other Netwrok File and Print Services"

I'll be looking into that immediately.

Fred

[Fred Martin_1]

I added Print Services for Unix, on the Win2003 Server.

Interesting, it didn't allow any configuration, nothing regarding security etc and I can't even find where to turn off the service now that it's there.

Is there any way to control -who- can print to the printer via unix?

Anyway, on the unix box I added a remote printer with SAM and it works fine.

So, thanks for the assistance.

One note, it prints in a fairly small font on the Windows printer (an HP4000, in this case). I assume that there is nothing that unix can do about that?

[Fred Martin_1]

Our unix print jobs from the database send control codes to the printers to set character pitch at either 10 or 16.5. I have the correct codes, we've always used them with FacetWin.

Using rlp though, the codes don't seem to survive and instead appear in the print job, something like:

[]&k2SFirst Line of text

...rather than being picked up as a control code by the printer. I'm guessing the first ESC is not being read.

Any ideas?

[Pete Randall]

Fred,

> I'm trying to print to existing printers set up with TCP/IP or JetDirect ports.

In that case, since these printers are directly attached to the network, I think you want to define them to you HP-UX box with HPPI (HP Printer Installer). You'll need to download and install HPPI:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=18922&taskId=135&prodTypeId=18964&prodSeriesId=27349〈=en&cc=us

Then you can either set up your printers interactively by running hppi or by command line with the addqueue command.


Pete

[Fred Martin_1]

Thank Pete.

The printer is also set up with a queue on a Windows box. Is there the potential for unix to send a job to the printer when it's busy with a job from Windows?

We have a few network printers here that are served by two Win servers with their own queues, rather than one passing to the other, and they occasionally get locked up when a large job is sent from both machines at the same time.

Fred

[Fred Martin_1]

I modified the unix printer's interface file to show me a copy of the temp file that it sends to Windows with rlp, and it has the proper codes in it. I don't see any switches for rlp that would lead me to think it doesn't pass the entire file as-is.

The fact that the final printout shows the codes too - the [] above is the required escape character - tells me that Windows isn't stripping them either; it just seems the printer is ignoring them.

It does -not- ignore them when FacetWin, a Samba-like SMB thing, sends the file. So I'm stumped.

Fred

[Fred Martin_1]

Well, this got resolved but not in the way expected; I won't be using Samba -or- rlp for the printing after all.

It turns out, Facetwin does allow printing to shares from Win2003 servers. Just a configuration issue. Given that Facetwin is up and running already I'll run with it.

Thanks for your assistance. Learned a lot about rlp and Windows2003 unix print services in the process...

Fred