Printing from a Linux system to Windows Terminal Services

[Teknoratti]

I have a Red Hat 9 Linux sytem that has an Canon model printer connected to it locally. When I connect via Rdesktop to a Windows terminal server I am not able to print to the local printer. printer redirection is checked on the rdesktop properties.

I was wondering what the fundamental differences are in linux as far as the driver process is concerned.

In windows normally what happens is theres a pc with drivers for a particular printer installed on the client side. there are also drivers for the printer on the server side. When connecting through terminal services the terminal server looks at the printer type and driver, and matches them up with what it has on it's side. If they dont match your printer is not redirected.

How does Linux communicate with a print device? Is it through some sort of universal language like a generic post script driver?

 

[Teknoratti]

One other thing. Does Linux even care about the hardware specific driver, like in a windows environment?

 

[stefanwagner]

Yes, cups has specific printer files.
Some printers support colors, double side printing, different paper sources, resolutions, and so on.

How do you print on linux?
Via cups?

Depending on your Windowmanager there might be a printer-configuration-program like gnome-cups-config, kprinter and some more.
Or you change settings in the browser, if cupsd is running, with

http://localhost:631

I'm not sure how and where to enable remote printing.
The files in /etc/cups/ migth be another starting point.

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[smah]

Using Linux right now, so I can't be specific... but on the Windows machine, look in Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Windows Components, somewhere in the 'additional network components' or something, there is a unix print services utility or something. I'm not sure what that does though. Another way to print remotely to a Windows machine would be via the samba client if the printer is shared by Windows.

 

[Teknoratti]

I have the linux box with the printer attached locally. I looked at the event logs on the Terminal Server, and found that the print driver name for the printer was unknown. As I said earlier it has to match exactly. It is something to do with that. I did some searching on M$ knowledge base and read a way to solve this issue. But I will test this out.

 

[smah]

I misunderstood, I thought the printer was on the MS Terminal Server.

 

[stefanwagner]

We still don't know how you print locally from the linux-machine.
Most distributions nowadays use cups (Common Unix Printing Services).
You may check if cupsd is running with 'ps -C cupsd'.
If it's up and running, a 'lpq' (list printer queue) would show you 'LaserJet-4-Plus ready' or 'Canon-xyz ready' or something.

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