installing Windows printer drivers in Samba

What is "the openSUSE way" of installing a Windows printer driver for a
printer shared by Samba so that Windows clients can automatically
install it? The naïve attempt of just trying to install it from a client
failed because of insufficient rights. The SUSE site seems to have only
descriptions for old releases (up to SUSE 8.x or so), and the 'net at
large has lots of docs but all involve editing smb.conf by hand in ways
which I fear will conflict with what YaST generates.

Thanks for any hints
Tilman

Having received no replies to my first question, I have now tried to
configure my Samba server for automatic printer driver installation to
Windows clients, by following the article at

http://www.enterprisenetworkingplane...le.php/3621876

ie. installing the CUPS Windows drivers from
http://www.cups.org/windows/software.php plus the Adobe PostScript
drivers and publishing them with "cupsaddsmb".

It doesn't work.

Every client I try still produces the same infamous message as before:
(translated from German - yes, it's really as stilted as that)

"The server on which the printer "Officejet_J5700" is installed does
not have a matching printer driver at its disposal. Klick "OK" if you
want to install the driver on the local computer."

The troubleshooting hints in the article mentioned above didn't really
help. I ran all the .ppd files in /var/lib/samba/drivers/W32X86/3
through cupstestppd and it always reported "PASS", though for some of
them it also displayed:
"WARN DefaultResolution has no corresponding options!"

Ideas?

TIA
T.

Tilman Schmidt wrote:

> It doesn't work.

if I understand well, you want windows client to be able to install
printer drivers.

the usual way is to have the windows drivers copied to a given samba
folder (doc in the windows help)

the cups drivers seems at first glance to be a way to use standard ps
windows drivers for all printers, I have no info on this solution

jdd


--
http://www.dodin.net

jdd schrieb:
> if I understand well, you want windows client to be able to install
> printer drivers.

Correct.

> the usual way is to have the windows drivers copied to a given samba
> folder (doc in the windows help)

I tried that first but gave up because it would have required somehow
giving the Windows administrator account write permission to the Samba
printer driver share so that it could install the driver there.

> the cups drivers seems at first glance to be a way to use standard ps
> windows drivers for all printers, I have no info on this solution

According to various docs I found on the 'net, both ways are possible.

Anyway, I figured it out now: my problem was that the Windows client
wasn't allowed to access the Samba share hosting the drivers. Changing
the parameter "guest ok" on the "print$" share from "no" to "yes" fixed
that, and the driver installation now works just as it should.

I then encountered another gotcha: When I tried to print the Windows
test page I got a pile of PostScript sourcecode printed instead.
Turned out the default Samba installation had added the parameter
"cups options = raw" to the global section of smb.conf. After removing
that, everything now works perfectly fine.

To sum it up, this is what I did:

- Modified the file /etc/samba/smb.conf:
In section [global], removed the line "cups options = raw"
In section [print$], set the parameter "guest ok = yes"
(I actually used SWAT to do that, because of its convenient access
to the appropriate Samba manual section for each parameter.)

- Downloaded the CUPS Windows drivers tarball from
http://www.cups.org/windows/software.php and installed it
by untaring to a temporary location and running "make install" there.

- Copied the Adobe PostScript driver files from directory
%SystemRoot%\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 on one of the Windows
2000/XP clients to the Samba server's /usr/share/cups/drivers
directory. I used WinSCP for that and just copied all the files
whose names started with "ps" but had to rename them to lowercase
afterwards because WinSCP had stored them with uppercase names
which the next step doesn't like. Perhaps copying them to a Samba
share and moving them afterwards would have been easier.

- Ran the command "cupsaddsmb -H localhost -a -v".

That's all. Happy now. :-)

HTH
T.

Tilman Schmidt wrote:

> To sum it up, this is what I did:

(...)

very nice :-)

could you copy/paste this in a wiki page, for future use?

thanks
jdd


--
http://www.dodin.net

jdd schrieb:
> Tilman Schmidt wrote:
>
>> To sum it up, this is what I did:
>
> (...)
>
> very nice :-)
>
> could you copy/paste this in a wiki page, for future use?

I guess I could, except that I don't know where to put it.
Can you recommend an appropriate place?

--
Tilman Schmidt t.schmidt@phoenixsoftware.de
Phoenix Software GmbH www.phoenixsoftware.de
Adolf-Hombitzer-Str. 12 Amtsgericht Bonn HRB 2934
53227 Bonn, Germany Geschäftsführer: W. Grießl

Tilman Schmidt wrote:
> jdd schrieb:
>> Tilman Schmidt wrote:
>>
>>> To sum it up, this is what I did:
>>
>> (...)
>>
>> very nice :-)
>>
>> could you copy/paste this in a wiki page, for future use?
>
> I guess I could, except that I don't know where to put it.
> Can you recommend an appropriate place?
>
create a page with an appropriate name, somebody else will sort it :-)

thanks
jdd

--
http://www.dodin.net

jdd schrieb:
>>>
>>> very nice :-)
>>>
>>> could you copy/paste this in a wiki page, for future use?
>>
>> I guess I could, except that I don't know where to put it.
>> Can you recommend an appropriate place?
>>
> create a page with an appropriate name, somebody else will sort it :-)

Well, I actually meant to ask which Wiki I should put this on in the
first place. I take it that you are thinking of the openSUSE Wiki.

I just had a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team and it seems that
there is quite a bit of overhead associated with this - creating yet
another account, subscribing to yet another mailing list, reading style
guides, etc. I'll see when I can get around to that.

--
Tilman Schmidt t.schmidt@phoenixsoftware.de
Phoenix Software GmbH www.phoenixsoftware.de
Adolf-Hombitzer-Str. 12 Amtsgericht Bonn HRB 2934
53227 Bonn, Germany Geschäftsführer: W. Grießl

Tilman Schmidt wrote:

> Well, I actually meant to ask which Wiki I should put this on in the
> first place. I take it that you are thinking of the openSUSE Wiki.

oh... yes, of course

>
> I just had a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team and it seems that
> there is quite a bit of overhead associated with this - creating yet
> another account,

if you don't have already a novell account, yes, but it's a matter of
minutes

subscribing to yet another mailing list,

not necessary, the forum (here) is the same

reading style
> guides,

better is not necesssary

wiki syntax if basically text. Let a white line between two
paragraphs, and voilà

nothing else really necessary. The info is the most important

well I created it for you, copying your mail, edit it to fit your needs

http://en.opensuse.org/Installing_Wi...ivers_in_Samba

line beginning by a space are boxed

jdd


--
http://www.dodin.net

jdd schrieb:
> Tilman Schmidt wrote:
>>
>> I just had a look at http://en.opensuse.org/Wiki_Team and it seems that
>> there is quite a bit of overhead associated with this - creating yet
>> another account,
>
> if you don't have already a novell account, yes, but it's a matter of
> minutes

Ah, silly me. I didn't realize the account I already have for
bugzilla.novell.com would work there too.

> nothing else really necessary. The info is the most important

Cool.

> well I created it for you, copying your mail, edit it to fit your needs
>
> http://en.opensuse.org/Installing_Wi...ivers_in_Samba

Thanks for that. I just went over it trying to make it a bit more
readable.

--
Tilman Schmidt t.schmidt@phoenixsoftware.de
Phoenix Software GmbH www.phoenixsoftware.de
Adolf-Hombitzer-Str. 12 Amtsgericht Bonn HRB 2934
53227 Bonn, Germany Geschäftsführer: W. Grießl