Topic: v5.6 printing permissions issue

[Roy Urick]

I installed v5.6 on a standalone server. Everything seemed to go in ok, worked fine.

When I went to setup my printer, that was another story. I purchased a generic (connectgear) IP based print server. I configured it with an IP, and tested from my 2000 box. No problems. I setup the printer on the server, and all seems to go well.

However, when I try to open the printer from a workstation, it sits, and sits, and sits (while displaying a status of "opening") , then finally returns an error that I dont have permission to access the resource.

Locally attached printers fail as well.


any ideas?

[ryan]

I had these type of issues in the past with 5.1.2.  From memory, I recall 2 fixes.

1.  Install appletalk on your windoze boxes.  Then install the network printer.

or

2.  On your server, edit the etc\smb.conf file under the [printers] area.  Change guest ok = no     to     guest ok= yes.  Restart smb. (service smb restart).

If you have an IP printer, why use your SME server in the first place?

Hope this helps.

Ryan

[Roy Urick]

If you have an IP printer, why use your SME server in the first place?
---------------------------------
several reasons...

windows 98 boxes can't print natively to IP ports, and the 3rd party drivers that do allow that cant be captured for legacy DOS printing across the network.
Also, some systems dont get along well with multiple queues dumping to a single device.

So generally speaking, older versions of windows play better with windows networking natively mapped network drives.

[ryan]

If your printer is an HP with a jetdirect port, or you have an external jetdirect port/device, you can do IP printing on Windows 95/98 after installing the jet direct software.  It works very well, but only with HP printers as DLC vs. true IP printing ( I think ).

Ryan

[Roy Urick]

yes, it does print well with 3rd party software/drivers. take a closer look at my last post. The key is that even with that software, you cant map the drives to a virtual LPT port for legacy dos apps. To be able to capture the port, windows has to see the share as \servername\printer and  the 3rd party apps dont work that way. I tried several ways around it, but none worked.

The client I am testing this for still uses an old dos based property management software called MRI. Its pure DOS, so it can only print to hardware ports. They are phasing it out, but they have been saying that for 2 years, so I am not holding my breath.

Thanks for the fix, it worked. I followed the procedures for changing the templates and it worked.

[ryan]

Windows NT workstation and 2k have a command you can type on the command line to permenantly 'map' or capture lpt1 to a shared network (windows) printer for legacy dos apps.  I have used this at my workplace...it works well.  I would play with this in a .bat file in your startup menu on win9x to see if it will function or not.  Check out:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q154498

good luck,

ryan

[Roy Urick]

thanks, but that isnt the issue. its that the hp software doesnt "show up" as far as the net use command is concerned. I even tried replacing the servername with the the "hp_jetdirect_printers" group that shows up when I connect via windows gui. No dice.

[ryan]

So changing guest access = yes  in the smb.conf allowed pure DOS systems to use windows shared printers?  I just want to confirm this.

Thanks,

ryan