Hi All, this is my first post!
I've installed mandriva 2006 on this PC, a reformat and reinstall of Mandriva's previous offering and now I can't get anything to print to the printers installed on my winXP PC. They worked before, but not now...in the print setup for KDE, the scan shows them, but nothing prints. Any idea what's going on here? I've run out of options that I can actually understand, being pretty new to Linux.
Any help is appreciated-
Dag

I had similar problem with Mandriva Le2005. In the KDE print setup I needed to tick the Guest account box otherwise XP just ignores the print job, I had to enable the guest account in XP too - but I guess this is already done since you had printing working before.

I'm assuming that CUPS is installed ?

Hi- Yeah, I tried that...it would report an error when I tried printing a test page as anonymous, and would say print job sent if I chose to authenticate as a guest, but it just sat in the queue and never printed. Nothing has changed on the XP machine. Is this maybe a SMB issue or something?
Oh yeah CUPS is installed- Thanks Dag

What type of printer is it?
Are you doing this via SAMBA? What steps have you tried so far?
What is the error message(s) you are getting?
What did you change from when it did work??

OK,I'm doing this via the printer wizard in drakconf, also tried it through the printer setup in KDE. I assume it's trying to work through SMB as I'm telling it to look for SMB printers on the network...it finds them every time but just won't print to them. I've tried deleting them from both locations and then re-scanning for printers and reinstalling them, I've uninstalled CUPS and reinstalled it, I've turned on the guest account on the XP machine and tried it that way. The only error message I've ever gotten was when I tried to use the anonymous login, it said it couldn't connect to the printer. The guest login lets the wizard proceed then it just sits in the job queue(the test page and an attempt to print from kontact).
I've tried to print to any of three HP printers on the XP machine, a laserjet III si, an officejet G85 and deskjet 895Cse, all working properly from other computers on the network. In the case of the laserjet I tried using another driver than the one recommended, that didn't work either.
The change in my setup is that I installed Mandriva 2006 where I had mandriva 2005 LE before.
Any ideas what to try next?
Thanks!

The fact that the job arrives but does not print suggests that the file format may be wrong, I get this with my Windows Me box since this does not understand the internet printing protocol used by CUPS -at least this is what I have understood to be the problem, from other posts that I have seen. XP is ok with CUPS so i'd check that CUPS is the printing system being used:

In the KDE print manager it should show at the bottom "print system currently used " this has a drop-down list . This should show "CUPS" is this right ? if not select CUPS and try again

Also Windows XP uses ports 445, 139 for SAMBA although the Anon login should work if configured on the printer to do so. What happens if you put one of the HP's on your Linux box and try to get XP to print to it?

OK as far as the print system being used, it is CUPS...as far as the file format, in smb4k I sent a .ps file from the linux box to the printer on the XP machine(the laser, the only postscript native printer I think) and it still wouldn't work.
I connected the deskjet 895 to the linux box and voila! it worked right away, I also found it on the network from the XP box and printed to it.
In the drakconf printer setup it says it's using port 631(forthe printers on the xp box), could that be the problem?
I am starting to think maybe it's the xp print server? But why would it still let me print from my other xp boxes on the network?
I want to keep at least the officejet on xp because it has a pretty good software suite for paperless faxing, scanning,copying, paperless fax receiving etc. HP hasn't ported the software to linux yet or I'd just move them all to the linux box...

It could be a port problem, I have an HP OfficeJet 6210 it uses port 9100 as a DYNAMIC port meaning the port number gets changed when the data is sent back. I don't believe Linux supports Dynamic ports, and that could be the issue. I would leave it as is since it is working the way you have it. Port 631 is a static port.

Hmm..well, that doesn't explain why it used to work and now it doesn't, specifically printing to the officejet or laserjet still on the xp box. The only one working is the deskjet that is now on the linux box, no luck with printing from linux to windows..thanks for your help though.

OK, this is still not working....more info, in the KDE printer management app. if I ask for a report on the printers that it found on my network, it reports that it was unable to access SAMBA printer for both the laserjet and the officejet. I have accessed them across the network from my laptop running mandriva 2005 LE. I still could use some help here, please?
Dag

Doesn't anybody know what might be the problem here?

My suggestion would be to open a bug in bugzilla, if it worked in the previous version but is broke now they must of changed something in the coding of the new version that is screwing things up. Other than that if you could post an Ethereal sniff of the failed printing job maybe someone can help after that?

This is a helpful document I used to set up Windoze/Linux shared printing via SAMBA and CUPS:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/...-Printing.html

I know your distro is not Debian but the components you want to use (SAMBA and CUPS) are the same no matter what the distro.

Once you have verified that SAMBA is configured correctly and your Linux box can "see" the printer connected to the WinXP box, make sure in CUPS you specify the printer URI as:

smb://guest@XPmachinename

And, as mentioned by a previous poster, the GUEST account on WinXP should be enabled.

SAMBA and CUPS logging levels should be increased to show more information while debugging. Good luck and hope this helps!

Whoops, the URI should be in the following format:

smb://guest@//hostname/printername

I always forget