Hello,

I've got SAMBA running as a PDC for my windows domain, but I can't seem to get printing working correctly...

I can print fine through linux, but that's not what I'm tying to achieve...

When I look through samba logs, I notice the following:

lpstat: Unknown destination "level3-hp-test"!

Here's my smb.conf, for reference.

[global]
netbios name = HOMER
server string = HOMER
workgroup = HOMENET
passdb backend = tdbsam
os level = 64
preferred master = yes
domain master = yes
local master = yes
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
domain logons = yes
logon path =
logon drive =
logon script = /home/netlogon/login.bat
logon home =/home/%u
wins support = yes
dns proxy = no
add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -g users -s /sbin/nologin -c "Samba user" %u
add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g machines -s /dev/null -c "SAMBA Machine Account" %u
delete user script = /usr/sbin/userdel %u
delete user from group script = /usr/sbin/deluser %u %g
delete group script = /usr/sbin/groupdel %g
log file = /usr/local/samba/var/log.%m
max log size = 50
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
load printers = yes
printing = CUPS
admin users = root rohang administrator

[netlogon]
comment = Network Logon Service
path = /home/netlogon
guest ok = yes
writable = no
share modes = no

[profiles]
comment = Roaming Profile Share
path = /home/profiles
read only = No
create mask = 0600
directory mask = 0700
csc policy = manual

[Lvl3]
comment = Level 3 printer
path = /var/spool/cups/lvl3
read only = No
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
printer name = level3-hp

[test]
comment = level 3 printer
path = /var/spool/cups/test
read only = No
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
printer name = level3-hp-test


Anyone else seen this error?

It looks like you might be using the UNIX print system spool directory for the Samba spool directory; the doc states this is a bad idea leading to erratic behaviour. You should rather create a world-writeable /var/spool/samba directory and use that one in your smb.conf file. It is not necessary to have a different spool subdirectory for every printer, you may set the value in the [printers] section.

Hope this will help...

Thanks for replying

I made the modification as per your suggestion, but I'm getting new problems now. The samba log now throws me the following:

lp: unable to print file: client-error-not-found

looking in /var/log/cups/error_log, I also get the following:

print_job: resource name '/printers/level3-hp-test' no good!

Any idea?

Since your Samba PDC works properly, let's assume we may exclude pure Samba errors; I see 3 other possibilities : client driver installation problems, CUPS configuration problems (related with Samba use of CUPS), spool configuration problems. The latter has been taken care of.

If I were you, I would try to set up a classic (that is, without CUPS) Samba printsharing system; if we can do that then any problem we may have when switching to CUPS-printing will be CUPS-related. A (rather long but) well documented step-to-step howto about classic printing support with Samba can be found here.

I've got it working!!

I can print from XP boxes to samba shared printers, but I have another problem, printing is quite slow. When I select the printer from XP, the application becomes almost unresponsive, for a random period (1 - 5 mins) then I can print.


The print job goes out ok and is fine, but it takes a while to print.

Any ideas?