Hello everyone,

I really hope someone can help me with a problem. Recently i migrated from WindowsXP to slackware 9. I really had to get used to it.., but i got it all working, the nvidia drivers, open office, email internet, etc.. Except for one very important thing.. I cannot print.
The situation:
I am running slackware, and there is another computer from my girlfriend that is running Winxp. The printer is attached to the winxp machine.
So i would like to print from my PC, with slackware to a winxp machine.

I really tried it all, read manuals, tried cups, tried several configs.. read about smb, read about cups.. I just don't get it working. i don't understand since i can browse the network. i can access files to a winxp machine.

My question is, where to start ? what things are related, and how will i get this working? the big problems is that before next week, when my workweek starts i have to have a running machine, which means i need office apps and a printer. If i can't get this working, i have to migrate again to windows XP, something i defenately don't wanna do, because i wanna use open source , now and in the future.

I understand that some people will say, read the fucking manual, search google. Well, i tried that. its really a shame, since i like my current config, except for that i can't print.

hopefully someone will give me a solution.
Thanks in advance for reading this,

cheers

Hi,

Its pretty easy to get CUPS running in Slackware, there are plenty of psots here on that. Networking, however its slighty different! Firstly, you never said whether you had a network running. Is your Slackware machine connected to your WindowsXP machine already? Can you swap files and share directories? If you can I am presuming you are running Samba. If so, I would move the printer onto your machine, and share it to the WindowsXP machine frrom Samba. Thats just IMHO.

munkeh

Well, yes, i can access the shares on the windowsXP machine. I can copy files from that machine to my machine and back. i can get cups running, but when i want to add a printer, in cups, i can't choose an smb printer. At least, i don't know how to do it.

attaching the printer to my machine is not an option, not for technical reasons., but it is just not my printer.

Have you tried "Add printer" wizard from KDE? If you have cups and samba running and properly configured, it should do the trick. Just pick "network printer" when asked.

thanks for your reply,

Well, have tried that, but i think i messed so much with the sevral config files that it is prett much screwed up. Have to start from the beginning i think. configuring samba, lpd etc.

Just dunno where to start.

Maybe because i wanted to let it work all so quickly and now i lost the overview. maybe i should just let it rest for 1 or 2 day's, and then start from the beginning

Well well, i just saw that i forgot just one thing!!!!!

the symbolic link in cups for samba:
Configure cups to print to a samba spool (if necessary).
Normally you would start adding a printer here. However, many people will want to print via samba because the printer is on an MS Windows server. If that is the case, you first need to configure cups to print to a samba spool. This will require a program called "smbspool" which is in the "smbclient" package. If you don't have that installed, apt-get it before proceeding.

* as root from an xterm, type the following:
linux:

ln -s `which smbspool` /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb

freebsd:

ln -s `which smbspool` /usr/local/libexec/cups/backend/smb

That was it, 4 day's down filled with frustration, but finally it works i can just setup the printer within cups.

cheers to u all
duister