Print Server in linux
 

Hi all.

I have an office environment with 10 Windows XP pcs. Right now i am totally blank as how network print server setup works, i was just thinking about the following steps

1) Deploy a central print server in linux so that clients (windows XP) dont need to install any drivers of printer on their machines.
2) How will i add clients on print server ? based on username or IPs ? in either case, can i set quota in number of pages that each account is allowed to print ?

Kindly point me in right direction

I had following distributions in mind for above setup

Fedora 13
Centos 5

Your requirements can be met by setting up your Linux server with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) and Samba to serve your XP clients.
You can setup Samba to keep client drivers so that the network printers can be made available by using the Windows "Add Printer" wizard. It is generally best to have native Windows printer drivers on the client machines as that is what Windows software expects. When a Windows client prints, the formatted print output is then directed to a CUPS raw print queue and on to the printer.
For full detail see http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...lprinting.html
With some googling you should find a guide that suits you.

I have not tried setting up quotas, but this link looks useful. http://printing.kde.org/documentatio...als/quotas.php

Hello noony123,

the most reliable setup for windows clients and linux printserver I ever had was with cups and samba.

Install the printer with cups and share it in the network. Configure samba.

Configuring the Windowsclients for the printserver: the fast way, open the explorer and in the adressbar insertwhere xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP-adress of the printserver. This should show all shares on the server, including the printer. Then doubleclick on the printer and you will be asked if you want to connect.

There is another way via "Start"->"Printers" and then "add Printer" and so on.

Also one may share the printer without using Samba, Windows as well as cups can deal with the ipp-printingprotocol, but I once faild to install such a setup.

Markus

Dear Sir,

Is it possible to setup SAMBA or CUPS without installing drivers on XP machines ? i am asking this out of curiosity that is it possible to configure windows XP in such a way that it simply sends its request to print server without having any printer drivers installed ??

Kindly guide me

It is possible to do this for simple text streams i.e have XP print to a generic text printer that then is passed to a CUPS queue with an associated PPD file that will accept the text stream and format for the printer.
The problem comes with more complex documents (e.g containing images or even special print characters).

Why do you have a problem with installing printer drivers on the XP clients? XP comes with many printer drivers already available. You only need to add a printer driver if your printer model is not included.

Note: in a pure Windows Network, when connecting a Windowsclient to a Windowsprintserver, the drivers are copied automatically from the server to the client (unless there are already apropriate drivers installed on the client).

Markus

Dear Sir,

So you mean that if i use SAMBA or CUPS, in that case i do need to install drivers on windows machine. Basically i was thinking from the point of view, that in order to make it almost seemless for windows users, it would be better that they simply dont have to install anything like drivers etc.

So to end this post, can you kindly confirm that there is no way for the clients to access the print server for any type of printout (including images) without installing the driver ?

Thanks alot in advance

Well, a user who wants to install a printerdriver on a Windowsmachine will need administrator-permissions.
It is usual, that on a Windowsmachine a user which is member of the administrator-group connects the printer to the server, this is done once.
Afterwards every user is permitted to print.

I don't know exactly how cups and samba handle the issue of the driver for windows.

Which printer do you use?

Markus

Yes, a driver must be associated with a printer for anything meaningful to be printed on the page. If the drivers do not already exist for that make / model on the client they must be manually installed or as already stated you can configure samba to automatically download the drivers when adding the printer.

http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...html#id2626650

to further what everyone is saying, yes a driver WILL have to be installed on each machine, BUT it is a one time install by the sysadmin of the it department (which probably means you) not the end user of the workstation, once the driver is in place it wont have to be installed again until the unit is reformatted