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Printer sharing

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mufka

ISP
Dec 18, 2000
587
US
Is there a way to share a printer through RedHat 7.1? the printer is a HP LJ 5SiMX with a Jet Direct card. Can this be done without xwindows? Samba is also running on the Linux box.
 
Hi,







Presumably you mean for M$/Win clients sharing a linux printer. There are at least two ways you can do it.







Using just ordinary lpd, you can get client software for the winboxes that allows them to print to a port, e.g. lp@172.16.16.1 .



You can get some free software that provides this functionality from ftp://ftp.axis.se/pub_soft/prt_srv/utility/printmon/latest/setup.exe







That s/w (windows print monitor) is really designed for users of Axis print servers but you can use it simply for lpr/lpd printing anywhere on a IP network.

Just install it on you windows clients and configure a printer. Its a little different they way you do because you install as a local (vs network) printer then change to use one of the ports that should become visible.




The other way would indeed be thru Samba.You'd need to edit your smb.conf file so that it had :







printer = lp (name of print queue)



[my-printer]



comment = HP Laserjet 5



path = /var/spool/samba



printable = yes







Unless its been fixed I believe you have to restart the printer after the first job is spooled thru samba :







/usr/sbin/lpc stop lp



/usr/sbin/lpc start lp







Rgds







 
Where in the smb.conf file do I specify the IP address of the printer so it knows where to find it?
 
Hi,





For redhat the smb.conf file is in the /etc/samba directory, i.e /etc/samba/smb.conf .





Do you know about 'swat' - the samba windows admin tool... It's the most normal way people admin samba nowadays. Just to do from a browser.





(if it doesn't work edit /etc/xinetd.d/swat and change the line 'disable=yes' to 'disable=no'. Then restart xinetd, i.e. '/sbin/service xinetd restart' and try again.)





Swat is fairly intuitive to use and generally much easier than editing the config by hand.








Regards
 
I know where the smb.conf file is, but what to I add to it? I haven't seen any instructions on how to print to setup a share for a network printer (not attached to the samba box).
 
Hi,

Bit confused now on what you want. Who want's to print to this printer - win clients ? Also, what kind of jetdirect card is this - a print-sever card c/w rj45 network socket or one of those usb ones ?

Anyway, if clients can't print direct and you want linux to be a print-server, you firstly set-up the printer so that you can print from the local box using lp / lpr . Use 'printtool' or 'linuxconf' to set it up - call it something like hp5. Test printing .. e.g. 'lpr -Php5 test.txt'.

Then if you wanted to share through samba you would add th following block to smb.conf :

printer = hp5 (name of print queue)
[my-printer]
comment = HP Laserjet 5
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes

Assuming you have allowed browsing in your config, the printer should be visible in network neighbourhood.

Regards
 
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