Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I haven't done this but was under the impression that samba
> could associate any windows print driver (not just
postscript)
> with a shared printer and it would auto-install the driver
on
> the windows client when the printer was set up there.
Yes, and that requires some manual setup on the server for
each new printer that is not straight-forward. You have to
get the string and other files _exact_, and some vendor
programs are not exactly built for such redistribution.
Typically you have to install on one Windows system, then
share it, then grab those files back off, and you finally
have just the fileset. Then you've gotta comb through the
INF for the strings.
Not fun.
Furthermore, vendor printer drivers tend to conflict with the
NT spooler. A few years ago IKON came out and made a serious
mess of one of my networks once because the guys went around
installing the Lexmark and Ricoh drivers, which instantly
conflicted with each other as well as the HP drivers. I
caught them by the 5th system, before they destroyed any
more.
This is why I advocate either #3 or #4 if you have more than
a few printers on a few servers. Using at least Postscript
for everything means no inter-vendor mess. It also means
that you have *1* driver, and everything becomes a matter of
PPDs. With CUPS, you can make most printers look like a
Postscript printer.
If you use the CUPS driver for Windows with the CUPS-Samba
integration, you do _not_ have to mess with the smb.conf and
the printer strings at all! The CUPS driver for Windows lets
Windows clients see the CUPS IPP service, and then it uses
SMB to download the appropriate PPD (which is administered
with _all_ options from the CUPS server itself). The
CUPS-Samba integration means you run *1* CUPS command to
republish the PPDs -- again, *0* smb.conf editing, setting up
printer strings, etc...
--
Bryan J. Smith | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx | (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ | missing headers)
