I got SMB printing to work!!!

[BSDimwit]

I GOT SMB Printing to work. Here is my setup... Please move this to the HOW-TO section.

1. Powerbook G4 550 connected to the network via airport
2. FreeBSD PC running FreeBSD 4.6 STABLE
3. Windows XP PRO PC with HP Deskjet 841C via USB.

Now I wanted a way to for share the printer attached via usb to my XP machine with my Mac OSX.2.1 and FreeBSD 4.6-STABLE machines. I knew that cups supported Samba printing so while reading the Gimp-print FAQ I stumbled accross the proper way to get it all working. Keep in mind that you DO NOT need Gimp Print to get an already supported printer to work... I added it because the ESP drivers for my Deskjet aren't as good at Gimp-Print drivers. Gimp Print even has a MacOSX installer to make it all easy for you get it installed... I think if you install the Ghostscript too it will get Photoshop printing to work as well...but don't quote me on that, I still have to try it out. As a side note, I had my printer working already by running the TCP/IP printing service daemon on my XP box but it wasn't super reliable and seemed to take longer... This way, the macs and the BSD box talk to the windows box in its own language and I seem to get a more reliable result.

http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_FAQ_OS_X.php3

Here is is....

------ Start Excerpt -------

If you want to print to a shared printer connected to a Windows XP computer try these instructions (this procedure has not been thoroughly tested):

1. Open the Print Center utility (located in /Applications/Utilities/).
2. Hold down the option key on your keyboard and either click on the Add button in the Print Center toolbar or select Add printer... from the Printers menu. A new sheet will open.
3 In the sheet click on the top popup menu and select Advanced from the very bottom of the list.
4. Next, click on the Device: popup menu and select Windows Printer via SAMBA.
5. In the Device Name: field enter a descriptive name for this printer.
6. In the Device URI: field enter the device URI in the following form:

smb://winuser:password@workgroup/server/printer

winuser
XP login name
password
XP login password
workgroup
XP workgroup name
server
Computer name of the XP machine
printer
Share name of the shared XP printer

7. Finally, click on the Printer Model popup menu and select the manufacturer for your printer, and in the small window at the bottom of the sheet select the PPD file for your printer model. It's important that you select the correct PPD file, and the names are not overly descriptive, but if you match your printer model number with the number in the PPD file name you should be OK.
8. Click Add.
9. Print a test page.

------ End Excerpt -------

By following these directions, I was also able to get my FreeBSD box to print to the XP box via Samba and CUPS. The only thing I had to do besides this was the following...

as root do the following...

cd /usr/local/libexec/cups/backends
ln -s `which smbspool` smb
then restart cupsd and do the stuff listed above... but from the cups webbased admin utility available at http://localhost:631/admin

Hope this helps!!![quote]

[BSDimwit]

I went home and verified that if you install the Ghostscript program found at gimp-prints site, photoshop and other postscript outputting software does in fact print now.

Not sure if anyone cares, but there you have it.

[Barney15]

While I can't confirm this, I don't think you can get the SAMBA print option without installing gimp-print. You can get to the Advanced options, but they don't include SAMBA printing.

I have a laptop I installed gimp-print on and an iMac that I have not. No SAMBA option on the iMac, but it's there on the laptop.

Jim

[kermit64]

does it have to be xp??
i have an hp 882c usb connected to a 98 box. i installed gimp and got the option for a Windows Printer via Samba which i hadn't had before, but i still can't seem to get it right. with the exorbanant amount of references to xp i thought maybe that might be the problem. any help???

[Barney15]

I was readin this thread at home, so I didn't get a chance to check out BSDimwit's smb format which I had not seen before.

I had been using the smb://workgroup;usernameassword@server/printer
and that did not work. Thanks to this post and putting the workgroup after the @, I am up and printing at work.

Thanks a bunch. I've been trying for months to make this work.

P.S. Kermit64, it doesn't have to be XP, almost any flavor will work; I'm on an NT network.