SAMBA Printing

[ivan]

Following on from Ben's saga with network drivers in which SAMBA was mentioned several times, I have a question.

Is it possible to use SAMBA as the transport mechanism to print from OS/2 to a printer on a password protected network print server?

I can do this from win XP running in a VM on OS/2 but not directly from OS/2 itself.  Maybe I'm not making the necessary sacrifices.

If it is possible, and someone is actually doing it, could you/they please let me in on the secret.

[Doug Bissett]

Following on from Ben's saga with network drivers in which SAMBA was mentioned several times, I have a question.

Is it possible to use SAMBA as the transport mechanism to print from OS/2 to a printer on a password protected network print server?

I can do this from win XP running in a VM on OS/2 but not directly from OS/2 itself.  Maybe I'm not making the necessary sacrifices.

If it is possible, and someone is actually doing it, could you/they please let me in on the secret.

It has been some time since I had this working, but the "secret" is to get the port driver for the client. Specifically: ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/samba/pdr/smb_pdr-1.0.1-20110711.zip. Then, install the printer driver in the client machine, and change the output port to use the SMB port. Of course, the printer also needs to be configured in the server machine SAMBA setup.

[Alex Taylor]

Doug, that version of SMB.PDR is very old and lacks some important fixes.

The latest version is 1.03 and is included in the most recent test ISOs of eCS 2.2.  The source is in SVN on Netlabs as well, but I actually don't know if it's been uploaded publicly somewhere.  I think I left that job to Herwig since he manages the Trac page.  Maybe I'll do it myself, though.

EDIT: Hmm, now I remember why I didn't do that.  I don't appear to have write access to the Samba directory.

[ivan]

Thanks guys, but does not allow me to print to a print server that requires a user name and password. 

When I tried from the XP VM it asked for the user name/password after selecting the printer and it appears to remember that and allow printing.  I don't see any way to tell samba for OS/2 how to do that.

[Doug Bissett]

I don't see any way to tell samba for OS/2 how to do that.

The user ID and password, is in the Output Port driver (SMB.PDR) settings. I think it defaults to GUEST, but it can be set.

I just tried it (with SMB.PDR dated 5 Dec 2012, from eCS 2.2 beta - bldlevel says it is 1.02.02). I see the print job in the local printer, then I see it in the remote printer, the printer wakes up, and the job goes away, as if it had finished, but nothing prints. Doing the same thing on the printer host system, I see the job go to the local printer, the printer wakes up, and the page prints.

Doug, that version of SMB.PDR is very old and lacks some important fixes.

The latest version is 1.03 and is included in the most recent test ISOs of eCS 2.2.

Hmmm. Now I remember that there was a problem there. That needs to be fixed.

I haven't tried to use the SAMBA printing support recently (about a year). I have been trying to get CUPS to work over the network (with not much success - it seems to block access, because there is no user ID and password - I can find no place to insert that information). It is not a priority, for me, anyway, since I rarely print anything, except test prints, any more.

FWIW, the whole SAMBA Wiki is a real mess. It is very difficult to figure out what the latest, recommended, versions are, and some of the later ones don't work very well.

As noted above, 1.02.02 seems to be the newest that I can find, although I do remember something about version 1.03.

[Andy Willis]

Doug, that version of SMB.PDR is very old and lacks some important fixes.

The latest version is 1.03 and is included in the most recent test ISOs of eCS 2.2.  The source is in SVN on Netlabs as well, but I actually don't know if it's been uploaded publicly somewhere.

This is the bldlevel from on netlabs:
[e:\svncode\samba\branches\smbpdr-1.0]bldlevel smb.pdr
Build Level Display Facility Version 6.12.675 Sep 25 2001
(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1993-2001
Signature:       @#netlabs.org:1.03#@##1## 10 Oct 2013 15:56:01     AGARADZO::::
::@@Samba client port driver for SMB printing
Vendor:          netlabs.org
Revision:        1.03.03
Date/Time:       10 Oct 2013 15:56:01
Build Machine:   AGARADZO
File Version:    1.3
Description:     Samba client port driver for SMB printing

However, it is not working properly for me but I haven't had a chance to see if it is something I did wrong in building/installing it or if it is the current state of the code.

[ivan]

I have tried the smb.pdr that I have (ver 1.0.1) and it gives an error message:

 ERROR 1 during spooling to smb://os2:****@work01/192.168.0.30/lp

If the **** is supposed to be the password then it is much too short to work.

As Dug says the SAMBA Wiki is a mess and says nothing about setting up things like printing - or even if network printing is even possible.