share printer through samba (Suse 9.2)
 

I just setup a home network like below:

A router serves as DHCP server for a couple of PCs and a Suse box.

I also setup samba server in linux to share directories with PC windows platform. There is no domain server in this system. Am I able to setup printer in linux and share it through samba so PC can print document through samba connection? How should I do it? Thanks a lot.

David

Connect the printer to the suse box because the windows shares don't like it and don't tell. At least I couldn't get em to talk. Even at gunpoint. If you need help here I wouldn't be surprised. Took me forever to figure out I had to say black cartridge or else crap would print for 50 pages. Don't leave your test by itself for sure cause you will support the need to recycle by yourself.

Then, you need to open some ports on firewalls. tcp 138, 445, and 631 I believe. I heard somebody say it helps to have 136:138 (for some reason the people at SuSE believe that colon is better than a dash?). then, to access the printer on the win boxes all you gotta do is follow the network links. Good luck, sorry if I was a bit verbose, it's new year's eve and I ain't sober. Tell me if you got it please.

Happy New Year!

thanks for your info. I will try it out and let you know. Happy New Year to you too.

David

Printing can be quite an issue but you can print both ways from Windows to linux box running Samba and vice-versa. If you have the Samba stuff working so that Windows boxes can see and browse the Samba shares then you're half way there.

I have two linux servers, both running Samba with one as a PDC plus several Windows machines with various printers attached. Both linux machines run CUPS and I've added the remote Windows printers to the linux boxes. I've also managed to get the CUPS to CUPS browsing working so that when printing from linux I get the remote CUPS printers appearing in the drop down box as well. Therefore I can print from linux1 to the remote linux2 printer ... which just happens to be a remote Windows printer!

Adding a remote Windows printer is pretty straightforward using the CUPS Web interface (localhost:631). The Windows printer needs to be shared and I found that you need to put a Windows username and password in the smb:// connect string in CUPS. The format I used is smb://winuser:winpassword@winmachine/winprintershare.

If you have Samba server set up using CUPS as default then you should be able to use the Windows add printer stuff to add a printer attached to the linux box. I haven't bothered trying to set up the Windows drivers on the linux box so that any Windows machine can download them, so you need to have the Windows drivers available locally on the Windows machine for this to work.

There may be firewalling issues to overcome - but provided your Windows browsing of Samba is working then everything should be fine. Port 631 is used by CUPS but I think that that should only be an issue if you are using IPP or want other CUPS servers to talk to each other.

Good luck!

Most win boxes have most printer drivers already there.