dear gurus, seniors, hello good day to you

i am newbie in this area. we want to get the rid out of windows 2003 print servers. we become sick of restart printer spooler services everyday when printing hang,halth,jam on printer. as admin we have to go to server and restart print services.

now let us continue,

1)if using rhel installation time, what customer packages,binaries i should install it.

2) is cup is the print server name in linux world?

3) we are having all windows xp,2000,2003,vista,win7 client

4) where our all printers having ip based, 99% they r network ip based printers

5) currently we open print share area on windows and all os(windows related) drivers r inside v right click and connect printers

6) in linux will it stored drivers for windows for client?

7) for ip base hp printers, do i need to download drivers from hp website or it will recongize detect over network all ip printers

8) any chance of hanging printing similar to windows machines encounter then we have to go to restart "print spooler" services. as no alternate provide from microsoft

keeping above scenario what step should i follow and start practicing.

kind regareds

Hello,

You'll find all of the answers on the site of CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). CUPS is widely used in the Linux/Unix world.

Kind regards,

Eric

dear eric and all

as i said i am begiiner in linux printing world, still my questions are pending. is cup is like package we need to install to rhel or any linux flavour?

then cup will take care everything?

regards

Hello,

Normally CUPS is already integrated/installed in your distro. Check with:
if it's installed on your RHEL. If it's installed you can check if it's running:
If it is running you can access it's administration webpage by typing:
and administer almost anything from there.

Kind regards,

Eric

salimshahzad,

The print server is not a problem in the linux world, we have better one, CUPS itself can publish your printer services with a properly configured ip, can spool jobs, authorize exclusive users, or you can do just anything commonly useful for a printer in the network.

The usual problem is this: see to it that your printer is supported with a linux driver. Canon has notoriously more number of printer models still in want of good driver although the condition is now improving. Printer manufacturers still have that "secretive proprietary" hangover that they don't open up their codes to the free software community, resulting in hacking obstacles that only rendered their products less useful to us.

Hope this helps.

Well lucky you, I just migrated my windows 2000 print services to a RHEL3 box. Here's how. I'll assume your windows domain is called foo.com, netbios FOO , and your print server is called jojo. And that you want to the main domain administrator account for setting up printers


1) setup cups
2) configure cups as a print server ( minimum /etc/cups/cupsd.conf )

3) add printers, use kprinters, etc , plenty of docs out there, in general, you want to configure them as postscript printers, pick a particular model if avaiable, go hunt down a ppd file for your model, or pick "generic post script". I'm assuming your network printers all support postscript.

4) install samba
5) configure to share print queues


6) make your samba server join your domain
7) restart cups and samba
8) create unix user called "administrator", default uid is fine

9) setup point and click driver install for windows.

create directory /var/spool/samba/drivers/W32X86 owned by "administrator"

10) log in a windows box as FOO/administrator , access \\jojo\printers and Faxes , right click on a printer, do properties. Say no when prompted to install a printer driver. Go to the advanced tab, and click new printer. point it to your print driver inf file, and install as usual. for other printer of the same model, just pick the model from the combo box.


taaa-daaaah

enjoy

RHEL3 is already in Phase 3 support and will have none after October this yr. Are you sure you can't use 5.4 ?