Topic: Samba Question for Gurus

[Jim Danvers]

Hey guys...

I have the PDF over LAN contribs / package running on a 6.0b3 test/play machine.  The SME box is in server only mode (1 nic).  My objective is to try and get some sort of pdf generation capability here at work, thus the machine needs to integrate with an existing windows environment (domain).  I found another contrib / how-to that gets the e-smith box to act as another server on the existing domain, and changes the security model from (is it user by default?) to domain.  So...   I have it pointing to the domain PDC and authenticated users (users logged onto the windows domain) can hit shares on the sme box.  Cool.  Now comes the interesting part, and I'm not sure how (or if) I can do what I would like to do.

The pdf over lan contrib uses a line in the 'printpdf' file (the process that actually does the work of converting the postscript file to a pdf file) that grabs the current users logon name from the environment and uses that as part of the resulting output file.  Ie, what you wind up with is a file called, for example, "jim-Nov11-161153.pdf", where my user name was pulled out of the environment as the logged on user and then the date and time appended to it.  Not ideal....  but workable. ( Ideal would be file name preservation, but we'll take what we've got for now!    ) The problem with this is that the user name is ~assumed~ to be an SME box user...  and it works good as long as that condition is met.  My users (for what I would like to do) are NOT going to be SME users, but NT domain users.  Here is what I'm getting as an output file at present -- public-Nov11-161153.pdf.  This is printing to the SME pdf printer from my XP machine logged on to the NT domain here @work.

Long story short, I am wondering if there is a means to have samba get the username of the person / machine submitting the job from the nt domain?  I've heard of something called winbind, but know nothing more than that (its name) about it.  I did a testparm on the SME box that I've created the pdf printer on and I see some references to winbind....  

Anyway..... anyone?

-=- jd -=-

[Michael Smith]

I'm no guru, and this will no doubt be viewed as an inelegant solution, but there's always the option of ignoring the server-based PDF makers and simply installing the free and nifty PDFCreator on Windows workstations as needed.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator

[Jim Danvers]

Mike....

Groovy and no - I'm not going to view it as inelegant.  If it works and simplifies matters - wahoo!  Thanks for the link - I (we, here @work) have sorta been looking for something like this.  I'm dnld'ing it now to test  / play  around with.

-=- jd -=-

[Michael Smith]

It's no substitute for the full version of Acrobat, but in my opinion Adobe has made that kind of bloated and full of features nobody in my experience uses ... MOST people just want to print to a PDF printer, and Adobe took that out of version 6!

[Tom Carroll]

Jim, did PDFCreator meet your needs?  I looked at it, but it appears to not support a few features I would need, such as bookmarks.

Just curious how it works for you on XP.

Tom

[Jim Danvers]

.... as Mike said above, as is the case (mostly) for users around here, all that they want to do is simply create a .pdf file.  ( mostly for e-mailing off to customers or clients )  So - yes and no - it does work on XP, no problems there (actually works quire well   ).  If you say that it doesn't make bookmarks or whatever, I'll take you're word for that and assume the same to be true here on an XP machine.  I didn't check - it made a good looking.pdf file.  Good enough!  

We do have some folks who do need to edit and or update / change .pdf's from time to time, thus a need for the full blown version of adobe s/w.

[Chris R]

JD -

I use essentially the same procedure as the pdf over lan contrib by Lasse Johansson on my Redhat 9 box.

Pass %U (uppercase) to the printpdf and you will have the windows user name to use in the script.

Hope that helps.

Chris R

[Guck Puppy]

Jim Danvers wrote:

> The pdf over lan contrib uses a line in the 'printpdf' file
...
> logon name from the environment and uses that as part of the
> resulting output file.  Ie, what you wind up with is a file
> called, for example, "jim-Nov11-161153.pdf", where my user
...
> Ideal would be file name preservation, but

I don't think "preservation" would be possible (?) - does the engine of the printer usually know the name of the file being printed? Sure, windows knows, the print manager knows, but does it even get sent with the job?

G