Topic: Problems with network printing

[Walid Moghrabi]

Hi,

I wanted to transform an good old PC into a file and print share server.
So, I did some testings and there is something strange concerning printing.

I have some network printers and I encounter 3 different problems when I define them on E-smith (5.1.2) and then, share them :

- it is sloooowww ... when I print just a little text, no problem, this is normal speed but when I print documents whith images (especially pdf files), it is very slow and it takes the same time for each page ... for example, I print a 4 pages document, it will take 30 s for the first page then 30 s wait since the second one, 30s wait, third one, etc etc ... this was not the case when the printer was managed by the old NT4 server or directly with my Win2k client PC ...

- uncommon page setup are considered as errors and so never print, for example, I tried to print an A4 page on which I have eaten some margins, word told me that the margins where wrong, I ignored and wanted to print anyway, my printer then lits with a nice red light (error) and the print process stopped, the page never printed.

- the printer doesn't want to print : I have a huge fax/printer (Canon GP335) which normally print without any problem when used directly or via an NT server but when I want to print via my e-smith box ==> nothing happens, not even an error message.

Any clue ?
Is there a way to do the job correctly or do I have to stay stuck to M$ ?

Thanks.

[steve]

has anyone put together a windows/e-smith network printing howto? If so I would like greatly to see it. If not I will try to put it together once I get my network printing setup.

[Robert]

What worked for me perfectly is this:

1. Set up printer on the SME server (name it whatever you want, say "canon", and tell the server which port it is connected to)

2. Iinstall the printer on the Windows workstation as a local printer

3. Once the printer is fully set up, go into the printer settings in Windows and change the printer port: add a port which points to the server's printer port. E.g. if your server is called "server1" and your printer is set up on the SME server as "canon" then add the port "\server1\canon" and select this port to use.

That's all, you're done.

A note on USB printers though: because of the way USB printers are set up in Windows, you will have to "trick" Windows: Install a USB printer with the printer locally connected to the Windows machine, then unplug it and plug it into the SME server (and remember to set the server to use the USB port for the printer) and then change the printer port in Windows the same way as above.

There was only one oddity: a couple of times the SME server swapped the two USB ports and I had to reassign the ports in Windows accordingly and then it worked again.

Hope this helps.

Robert

[Walid Moghrabi]

Robert : you don't understand the problem, of course, setting up a shared printer with SME is easy, the problem is not there, the problem is that it is extrememely slow compared to the same printer shared by a WinNT/2k server.
Don't try with a simple Word document, try to print a PDF with pictures in it (especially if pictures are quite big) then you'll see that it awfully slow and I don't understand why.

Bye.