I have an older AMD box that crashed, so I took the plunge to Ubuntu. I would like to print from my Vista laptop wirelessly. From other posts and by process of elimination, I think it's a driver issue. SMB and CUPS are functioning and I can share files both ways. Vista sees the printer, but the test page won't print.

From Vista "help" I discovered the following passage:

If you are trying to use a printer that is plugged in to another computer and shared on the network, make sure that a driver for your version of Windows is installed on the other computer. For more information, see Find and install printer drivers.

I take it this means that I need to install the Windows driver on the Ubuntu box. My question is what specifically do I do? Ideas are most welcome.

This seems similar to another post that I saw recently. Since the error message is showing up on the Vista box then I believe the Vista box wants to download the printer driver from the printer server. If the printer server were a Windows box then it could do that. I believe that here one of three things is possible. Either you don't have the printer driver installed on the Vista box which you should do, or CUPS doesn't support your printer, or CUPS isn't sharing the printer over the wireless network.

This is what I would do. I am assuming that the printer is directly attached to the Ubuntu box.
- Install the printer driver on the Vista box.
- See if CUPS supports your printer. Can you print to the printer on the Ubuntu box?
- See if your firewall is blocking the printer port on the wireless network card.

Here is a list of network port assignments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...P_port_numbers

I would check ports 35, 170, 515, and 631 to see if they are blocked by your firewall. Port 631 is used to connect interactively through a web browser to the CUPS control software. http://localhost:631 but that is on the lo network port. Anyway I am guessing about whether any of these ports are involved. I just looked on that web page of port assignments for the word "print" and that list is what I got.

Let us know if any of these ideas worked or anything else that you do that works.

I'm pretty sure that installing the printer driver on the Vista box is the correct solution.

Vista is assuming that windows is the only OS. What you need is a driver that works on the linux computer --- which you already have. Your problem is probably permissions.

Check out this Swerdna does a nice job explaining things.

It is a suse howto, but you should be able to make the adjustments needed for you distro

I will work through these suggestions and let you know what works. This may take a while, so I want to thank you for the help now before the thread gets cold. At the very least, I am learning more about the inner workings of my operating systems - which is rewarding in itself.

I added/uncommented the following lines in smb.conf, according to the swerdna article:

printing = cups
printcap name = cups
load printers = yes
use client driver
guest OK = yes

Then I go to Vista and connect to the printer. It tells me that the server does not have the correct driver installed. I think I have it installed on the Vista side, but I'm not sure where to look to confirm that.

Firewalls are off, so that's not in the picture. The Ubuntu driver is Gutenprint v 5.02.

Also, Vista thinks my server is NT based. I saw it in some dialog box as I was messing around - don't remember where.