The Printer Thread

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by monstert

How would I do that? And would a driver for an old Apple printer work for an hp printer? Doesn't [Samba] require me to also share directories? I just want to share the printer.

1) Use the "Internet Printing Protocol" to connect from Windows to the Linux box. (CUPS uses IPP by default.) In terms of the driver, as I said above, what matters is the driver on the Linux server. The Apple driver simply produces Postscript files, which is a widely-used, machine-independent page description language. The CUPS server will take the Postscript input, push it through its HP driver, and produce the page.

You'll probably have to modify the file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to allow CUPS to bind to the server's IP address. You should see a line that reads

Listen localhost:631

Replace "localhost:631" with "*:631" so the server can accept jobs over the network.

2) You don't need to share any directories with Samba. It all depends on what shares are defined in /etc/samba/smb.conf. By default, Samba usually shares all printers and all the home directories, but you can disable the latter by commenting out the [homes] definition in smb.conf. Using Samba requires that the Windows machine have the correct driver for your HP printer. The page-description file is created in Windows then shipped to the Linux box for printing without any further modification.

[monster]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

In terms of the driver, as I said above, what matters is the driver on the Linux server. The Apple driver simply produces Postscript files, which is a widely-used, machine-independent page description language. The CUPS server will take the Postscript input, push it through its HP driver, and produce the page.

Where can I find this driver? The one I found is for the 12/600 PS but it refused to install on Windows 7 (I haven't tried with Windows XP yet). It requires Windows 95 and won't install even under compatibility mode.

[SeijiSensei]

Windows 7 is a real problem it appears according to Adobe. You can try one of the other manufacturer's drivers. All the ones that have "PS" at the end are Postscript; the "PCL" drivers use HP's proprietary "printer control language."

You might be better off using Samba if you can find an appropriate driver for the Windows machines.

[monster]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

You might be better off using Samba if you can find an appropriate driver for the Windows machines.

I'm not sure if I'm doing this right. I can see my Linux computer in Windows 7 under Network Computers and in Windows XP under Workgroup Computers. And if I double-click on it, I can see the printers on Linux. But when I try to connect, it's still asking for the drivers even if I already have the drivers installed.

So I somehow manage to add the printer in Windows 7 using drivers for the OfficeJet 4300 series (I guess it's compatible with the PSC 1310 series). But since I can't seem to do the same on XP, I'm sharing the printer from Windows 7 to all the XP computers in my network.

It's a bit awkward to have to use Windows 7 just to print from an XP computer to a printer connected to a Linux computer, but at least someone else can print while I'm on Linux.

Anyway, thanks for your time. I'll see how this goes for now.

[monster]

Well, after deciding to tackle the issue once again, I was finally able to install the printer using the generic driver for MS Publisher Color Printer that comes by default with Windows XP. I guess it really is just a matter of using a postscript driver. Thanks SeijiSensei.

The only issue now is that while everything went fine with the desktop client, on the laptop client, the printer printed two copies of the test page. Is that just a one time thing or should I be worried about that?

[SeijiSensei]

Is that just a one time thing or should I be worried about that?

I'm going to ask you a question in a kind-hearted sort of way. Did you try to replicate getting two test pages at least another time or two before coming here to ask your question? The essence of scientific discovery is repeated experimentation.

If you always get two copies from one machine and not the other, it's likely that your defaults are configured differently on the two machines. If one machine always prints two copies of every document, create a test document in Wordpad on it and look at all the printing options. Is the default number of copies set to two? If so, you'll need to fix the default in the driver properties under Control Panel > Printers.

It's also quite likely that you tried to print a test document before when the connection to the remove printer was configured properly. In that case the printable image of the test document remained in the printer queue awaiting reconnection with the remote machine. When you fixed the problem, both the queued copy and the new copy of the test document were sent to the printer, and you ended up with both copies.

Remember, you can't really "break" your computer. Windows System Restore is a nice feature for the faint of heart.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Remember, you can't really "break" your computer. Windows System Restore is a nice feature for the faint of heart.

I thought that ability to hard format your hard disk is the nice feature, not system restore.

I always turn off system restore because of modern viruses : almost all of them attack SR.

[monster]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

If you always get two copies from one machine and not the other, it's likely that your defaults are configured differently on the two machines. If one machine always prints two copies of every document, create a test document in Wordpad on it and look at all the printing options. Is the default number of copies set to two? If so, you'll need to fix the default in the driver properties under Control Panel > Printers.

No, I've printed multiple test copies from both computers in recent past. And this is the first time I can recall it printing twice from any of the computers (at least, for a test copy). So yeah, now that I think about it, it's probably just a leftover job like you said.

Oh, and I'm not worried about breaking the computer. At worst, this would've been more of an annoyance, but I'm just happy at getting them to print.