Samba+Printer Woe..
 

I am using SuSE 10 from opensuse.org, and have my printer (Laserjet 1012) setup as a share in Samba. On my WinXP machine I can access the printer, however after a length of time, the printer in WinXP says ready, however when I printer I don't get anything, not even a test page. I usually have to restart the XP machine, and then it is fine again, for a length of time. Anyone have any solutions? or tips? Thank you in advance as this has been the best place for questions.



AceMan

I'm going to take a stab at this and say that since you can print from Win XP -> Laserjet (over SAMBA), at least initially, that it isn't a connectivity problem. There may be something buggy about this setup. Because I don't have a lot of info about your setup (such as relevant logs, etc.), I'm going to suggest something slightly different.

Instead of printing over SAMBA, you can instead try printing over CUPS (Common Unix Printing Service). It works similarly in that the server you are sharing the printer on must be running CUPS (and only CUPS ... if you have LPR installed, it must be removed because they may conflict). You then set the printer up locally on the server (using either KControl or the web-based interface at http://localhost:631).

Sharing it for a Windows PC is a bit of a pain if you are new to this. However, you must essentially do two things ... first, edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to allow printing from IP addy's other than 127.0.0.1. I know the file is long, but you should be able to find the right spot. You would need to add an "Allow From 192.168.1." (assuming that is your network IP scheme)

Second, edit /etc/cups/mime.types (I think) and /etc/cups/mime.conv (I think) and search for the row with the word "octet" in them and uncomment them out (remove the "#" at the front of the row). I believe in Slackware both rows are towards the end of those files. YMMV.

Now, restart CUPS by either rebooting the computer or by doing a

#/etc/rc.d/rc.cups restart <-- This is for Slackware

In SuSE land, you can probably restart CUPS through a GUI interface of some type.

Once you've restarted CUPS with the new changes in place, to print from your Windows PC, set up a new printer and when asked for the URL, provide ...

http://server_ip_address:631/printers/your_printer_name

This link will help you out if I've totally confused you.

http://www.owlfish.com/thoughts/wini...003-07-20.html