[PLUG] Samba problem...

[Richard Doyle]

On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 22:08 -0700, Michael Robinson wrote:
> The client is Windows 2000 professional and the software program is
> Family Tree Maker 2009.  My dad has an HP Deskjet 9800 hooked up to his
> Fedora Core 9 computer running samba 3.  He has paper that is special,
> it is wider and longer than letter paper.  How does he print to large
> format paper?  Under Fedora's printer administration applet, the print
> administration default has been set to custom, but that doesn't seem to
> be the trick.  I believe the printer driver on the Linux side is CUPS.
>
> Another weird thing, my CentOS 5 box doesn't see the printer.
>
> Are there special samba parameters that are needed so that he can
> print to his large format paper?

Michael-

Don't know if this will help... but we use CUPS (various versions) via Samba
3 on Linux servers (CentOS 3/4/5) for our Windows print queues. All of our
printers are network printers, which seems to be one of the big differences
between our setup and the one in question.

Anyway, we successfully have people printing on letter, legal, 11x17, and
probably other sizes as well... the way we do this is to setup the CUPS
queues as "raw" type, then using the specific (manufacturer provided)
Windows drivers on the workstations (those drivers will have the ability to
take advantage of whatever capabilities the printer has - including
different paper sizes).

My somewhat limited understanding of all this is that it bypasses any CUPS
drivers... CUPS is 'just a messenger' and does nothing with the data sent
from the workstation other than queue it up and send it as-is to the
printer. Theoretically, this should allow things to work pretty much the
same way as if the printer were connected directly to a Windows box.

HTH... I'm just a "junior-level" sysadmin, and by no means an expert when it
comes to Linux, CUPS, or Samba. If this is truly a Samba 'problem', or
something that can be fixed via Samba configuration - I'm the wrong person
to be listening to. :-)

-Rick