[Xastir] Samba Peculiarity

[Alex Carver]

--- On Wed, 2/11/09, Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> wrote:

> It is the CUPS thing that was the source of the biggest
> fights.  Once set up
> properly, sharing a CUPS printer through Samba is way cool
> because it presents 
> to Windows nothing more than a PostScript printer and even
> provides windows 
> drivers for that printer that get installed automagically
> when the windows 
> user chooses "Add Printer" and selects the
> network printer.  It's setting that 
> up that can be a hair-ripping experience because of various
> issues with 
> permissions.  And I have to go through it again every time
> I add a new printer
> to the server. 

Ah, but you don't need CUPS to give Windows a driver.  You can do that through Samba directly.

I suppose I'll be revisiting this topic again when I get my print server back online.  There are two printers waiting for the server and a third printer will join them soon (dot matrix, ink jet, and a laser is the third).  I'll see if Samba has remained as friendly to me as it was in times past.  But I so rarely change the configuration once it's set up that I don't notice.


> I resisted using CUPS on my server machine for several
> years, and did as you
> did, passing raw printer instructions from Windows.  This
> required the windows
> machine to have the right driver for whatever printer was
> on the server machine,
> and that did get to be a hassle.  But the main thing that
> forced me to go to
> CUPS was the sheer number of packages that absolutely
> insisted on it as a 
> requirement.
> 
> Now I won't go back, because CUPS actually rocks. 
> I've struggled every time
> I got a new printer with strange hacks, and CUPS has fixed
> most of it.

I might be forced into CUPS one day but since I don't actually print from any of the Linux boxes themselves, I never saw the need for it other than just getting in the way and forcing me to use a somewhat beefier machine to run it when Samba runs just fine on my 386DX print server.  Doesn't take much processing power to spool to disk and then spool to the printer port.  I might be stuck when the ink jet has to come online, it's USB only and I don't think I'll ever find an ISA USB card.


> Bonjour is apparently a client that allows OSX and Losedows
> machines to use 
> CUPS servers on the linux box without needing Samba to fake
> out Microsoft 
> Networking.  We already have one OSX box in the house that
> talks to the
> CUPS server on my machine so that all the printers are on
> one server.  I
> didn't know that the component of OSX that allowed that
> was called "bonjour" --
> I just thought it was a CUPS client.

Interesting, maybe one day I'll poke with it.  However I've learned very quickly don't fix what isn't broken.  :)  So far my Samba networking isn't broken on any of the Linux or Solaris machines so I'll leave them in peace. :)