First be sure you can print locally on the Linux machine. If your printer is already set up, you can test it by opening a small text file and printing it. You might have to manually do a page feed on the printer to eject the paper. Make sure your Samba is set up correctly on the Linux machine. You'll need "encrypt passwords=yes" and "smb passwd file=/etc/smbpasswd" lines in your /etc/smb.conf file. You need to set the workgroup or domain properly in the same file. (Reboot your Linux box or stop and restart smb services). And you'll need to add the Windows user account to your Samba server. When you browse the computers in Network Neighborhood (Windows 2000 users will use 'Computers Near Me') you should see the machine name and name of the printer share -- it should be something like 'lp'. Start the Add New Printer wizard. Select 'Network Server Printer'. Expand the machine and select the share name. You'll get an error message that the machine does not have a suitable driver, do you want to use the driver on your local machine. Answer 'yes'. Print your test page | For Unix-to Unix printing, it's generally easiest to use the remote lpr approach. Set up the remote printer on the client box and its spool directory (typically /var/spool/lpd/lp) and know the name of the spool directory of the remote printer on the server (just put lp, it knows the rest). Edit the hosts.lpd file on the print server so that the ip address of the client machine is in the list. Finally enable the connection -- often remote printing is disabled as a security precaution, so there is probably a tool (e. g. Redhat printtool or Mandrake Drakeconf) to make the connection live. Printing to a Windows machine will generally require Samba, and the distributions I have tested are buggy in that regard. |