I now have 3 computers on my small network with three printers

Computer 1) Mandriva Le 2006 running Samba with a Lexmark z22 usb printer which is shared and can be seen and printed from the other two computers

Computer 2) WinXP box with two USB printers, a HPpsc 1300 and a Lexmark z25

Computer 3) WinXP box with no printer

Computer #3 can see and access the shared partitions and printers on both of the other computer

Computer #2 can see the shared drives and the shared printer on Computer # 1 and can access it.

Computer #1 can see and use the Windows shares on the other two boxes but it can only see the two usb printers and is unable to use them. Trying to print a test Page on either of them causes the printer to send a carriage return and nothing else happens. I am running the shorewall firewall on the LInux box and have enabled it to allow Samba and CUPS access.

Been trying yo get this working for a long time, jusy hoping someone can help me out. And I have read the samba and cups documantation

If its any consolation to you. I've spent a lot of time on this issue too and found that Windows makes a terrible print server system. I ended up making Linux the print server for all my systems when I used to run Windows on my network. That way all my computers could use all my printers. You can even make Linux a print server for a printer that Linux itself can't print to. For example, a printer for which there is only a Windows driver available. Linux can be used because the Windows systems will render the printer output in the proprietary language the printer expects before it's sent to the Linux connected printer. Really cool.

Well I finally solved this one. After a LOT of research, I read that this printer (LexmarkZ25) does not work well or at all with CUPS, and it was suggested that I try LPRng. I installed LPRng and it works like a dream .. !Yay!

I haven't converted to cups yet either. I'm one of those old-school hold outs. I like lprng. I've been using it for years and it doesn't give me _any_ static. As long as this is the case, I will continue to use lprng. I hear cups is great, but I'm not going to spend the time to learn cups to solve problems I don't have.

By the way, all my home ink-jets are Lexmarks. They were the first ones to offer Linux drivers on for their commodity printers, so they gained my loyalty early. I've know a couple of them have given grief to some of my poor Windows friends. This is too bad. No one has doled out more grief than Hewlett-Packard. They are the worst in my experience. Some of their high end stuff is good... like stuff that cost more than $1500 or so.

Lprng is great. Just remember to process/filter for the target printer before you send to the printer server. Otherwise the printer server will get bogged down doing the rendering. If you render on the clients (which typically have one user at a time and thus plenty of extra horse power) all will run very quickly and efficiently. The printer server then only has to queue up and pass the output to the printer and these are low resource activities.

Glad it's working for you.