How to Access a Windows Shared Printer from Puppy 4

[steve_s]

Well, it wasn't the first time, and certainly won't be the last: it was me, not 4.2. I must have used the wrong sym link or something, but it was me.

Just now I booted in 4.2, set up the internet connection, made sure the link was there (it was) and looked for the picture that you submitted, rcrsn51, as that was a little different than the initial instructions and, of course, it was exactly like you showed.

So, in this case, it was user error. Nice catch and nice job and, above all else in this case, thank you for your patience.

[steve_s]

Well, I've probably overstayed my welcome here on this thread and rcrsn51 probably hates me by now, but I have to at least ask.

I upgraded to 4.2.1. It killed my connection.

don't know why. When I use 4.2.1 by itself I have no problem setting up the connection.

If I use rcrsn51's smbspool download I don't have any luck; if I use the smbspool with 4.2.1 I don't have any luck...just can't get it to go. And by that I mean that the Windows shared SMB Printer is not on the list, only the "Unknown SMB printer" is on the list. I've changed the smbspool a couple of times, redid the link, rechecked that a couple of times, then restarted cups, can't get it to go.

But unless there is some special item in 4.2.1 then i can't imagine what it would be...I had to at least ask if anyone knew...thanks.

[steve_s]

Well, can't tell you why it worked, but I followed this murga link and it killed the smbspool link. So, redid the link, everything works.



Don't know why. Something about how it over wrote the current cups kicked it, perhaps? Not sure. Even though I had installed other ways and other cups and redid the link and the smbspool multiple times, this was the one that had done it.

[growler]

I had all sorts of problems getting this to work - I have a HP Deskjet 840C on a windows XP SP2 machine which is shared on that machine as HPDesk
I had given it a static IP address of 192.168.0.3

I had an existing link in /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb that linked happily to /opt/samba/bin/smbspool

I tried another version of smbspool that I got off another forum thread - it was actually the identical size in bytes to the one I had so I don't think this was an issue.

I tried several versions of CUPS - the version that came in 4.2.1 of course, then I tried cups-1.4b2-patched-i386.pet and finally cups-1.3.10-i486.pet both from the ibiblio unleashed packages for 4 at:

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributio ... ackages-4/

I am not sure these were the issue.

I had set up cups with the DEVICE_URI of

smb://Administrator@192.168.0.3/HPDesk

but consistently got the error:

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/cups/backend/smb failed

The workgroup is CUDGELCONE (don't ask - it's my son's PC!!)
so I tried setting up the printers with:

smb://Adminstrator@CUDGELCONE/192.168.0.3/HPDesk
smb://CUDGELCONE/192.168.0.3/HPDesk
smb://192.168.0.3/HPDesk

for the device URI - none worked

I could print from rxvt using a little test.txt file I made up with:

Code: Select all

#smbspool smb://192.168.0.3/HPDesk 111 root "test" 1 '' test.txt

The key was that although when adding a new printer I never got the "Windows Printer Via Samba" option.

I did get an smb option and used this to enter the DEVICE_URI manually. From the command line the command:

Code: Select all

# lpinfo -v
network socket
network beh
network http
network ipp
network lpd
direct parallel:/dev/lp0
file pdf-writer:/dev/null
direct scsi
serial serial:/dev/ttyS0?baud=115200
network smb

showed network smb option available ok?

However, if you don't get a device option of "Windows Printer Via Samba" then there is some error with the link from /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb to /opt/samba/bin/smbspool

As suggested by steve_s post above (thanks Steve!!) I just deleted the existing link - which looked fine?? - and recreated it from ROX - you could equally use:

Code: Select all

#rm /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb
#ln -s /opt/samba/bin/smbspool /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb

The simplest DeviceURI

smb://192.168.0.3/HPDesk

did the trick

Hope this saves someone else!

[rcrsn51]

It's strange how this symlink is corrupted on some people's installs. Did you do a fresh install of 4.2.1 or did you upgrade a pup_save from a previous version?

[growler]

I did a manual copy across of the 3 files from the CD over the existing ones.

The symlink looked fine and definitely linked to /opt/samba/bin/smbspool - but didn't work obviously for some reason which I cannot understand.

[growler]

I got into trouble again ... same details as above... I could not get the CUPS web interface to give me a

Windows Printer Via SAMBA

option. No amount of deleting the link and re-linking worked so I simply copied /opt/samba/bin/smbspool to /usr/lib/cups/backend/smb rather than linking the file et voila ... all back in business.

[bee_pipes]

Hi!
Just a quick word of thanks for this thread. I had just gotten an ASUS eeePC (1005PE) and have found everything needed on these forums to get the windows desktop to share folders and devices (CD & DVD drives) with this netbook. The last shared device to get up was the printer. This thread was invaluable. The instructions posted by rcrsn51 were easily followed. I was not immediately successful on the first try and followed suggestions for getting the printer to produce a test page.

I am running puppy 4.3.1 on the ASUS netbook mentioned above. The printer on the desktop (windows XP) was set to shared on properties. Connecting via pnethood samba shares brought up shared folders and devices. The printer appeared as print$. The printer, a canon pixma mp610, was present on the cups list and was identified as a "windows printer via samba". Tinkering with the uri finally made it work. Following the suggestions I had no luck until specifying the uri by the IP address:

smb://nnn.nnn.n.n/printer

I realize this thread is old as moses, relative to software updates and such, just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to put it down in writing. If any other new folks are getting discouraged trying to get a shared printer on a windows box to work, just keep at it. The instructions in this thread are excellent.

Regards,
Pat

[Wognath]

rcrsn51,
Thanks for the great instructions. I used them to network a lab/classroom computer to a windows printer. To allow the connection, I had to include my login and password to the university domain in the printer uri. Can someone confirm that the login/password are well hidden in this semipublic computer? (I tried "modify printer" in CUPS and the password does not appear in the uri.) Thanks.

[rcrsn51]

As a test, I set up a dummy printer using a password. I then looked at the file /etc/cups/printers.conf and unfortunately the password was visible in plain text.

There are settings in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf that support encryption, but I know nothing about them. And Googling wasn't very helpful.

I'm sure this is not what you want to hear. I suspect that in a true multiuser environment, the printers.conf file is only readable by the root user, so there would not be a security problem like you have with Puppy.

[Wognath]

I was able to use a local login to share the windows printer. Thanks again for this information about passwords and for the instructions.

[ragaman]

Thanks to the TS for the info. Saved me from a lot of headaches.