Printing over SMB with xpdq

[Oleksandr Moskalenko <malex@purdue.edu>]

  Hi,

 Does anybody have a working interface for printing over SMB to WindowsNT?
I tried using the interface below, but xpdq fails silently and I don't
know what's wrong. I have a PostScript (LaserJet 4000N) on the other
side that works fine with Cups, but my Linux machine is really old and
slow (P150 with 32Mb or RAM) and cupsys takes almost 5 MB or RAM, so I
really want to get xpdq working. I have to authenticate myself by
providing my password as smbclient tries to access the printer share on
the WinNT machine. Any ideas?

  Alex.

[lp.hp] A samba interface for PDQ, tested with HP OfficeJet

Dan Connolly connolly@w3.org
Mon, 09 Oct 2000 15:45:14 -0500

Hi,

I just went to try xpdq across SMB to my HP OfficeJet,
but I saw:

        [[[
        Printers connected to a Windows machine are
        not currently supported, though it should be simple to
        write a (1 line, I think!) pdq driver using the
        "smb_print" utility. I don't have a network to
        test this on. Someone please create one and share it! 
        ]]]

        -- The pdq homepage [@@probably not the title you meant]
        http://pdq.sourceforge.net/drivers.html
        Tue, 12 Sep 2000 02:54:04 GMT

Indeed, it was a simple one line of code in the
right place. Attached find a samba driver
that I just cooked up in a few minutes.
Share and enjoy!

HOWTO:
        1. make sure your samba client setup is
        working. test with
        smbclient //your_server/your_printer -c "print -" </etc/motd
        (see below for what software to install to get
        this far)

        2. Stick the attached interface in /etc/pdq/interfaces
        (if you're not root, I suppose there's someplace
        else you can put it... I dunno.)

        3. Fire up xpdq and choose Printer/add printer.
        When you get to the choice of interfaces, choose samba,
        then supply //your_server/your_printer

        4. print away!

I suppose there are all sorts of ways that it can fail
silently. I hate that, but I'll let the next guy fix
those problems as they arise.

I just tested it using:

server:
 Win98 box
 printer: HP OfficeJet 330

client:
 Linux version 2.2.17
 smbclient   Version 2.0.7
 xpdq version 2.2.1
 cdj550 driver
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=cdj550
 GNU Ghostscript 5.10 (1998-12-17)

 filename="samba-0.1"

interface samba {

   help "The samba interface requires smbclient.
        contributed by Dan Connolly http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
        $Id: samba-0.1,v 1.1 2000/10/09 20:22:59 root Exp root $ "

   requires "smbclient"  # This is part of the samba pagkage, in the debian smbclient package, in particular

   required_args "SMB_PRINTER_NAME"

   argument { 
      var = "SMB_PRINTER_NAME"
      desc = "Windows printer name"
      help = "This is the NetBIOS name of the printer
        in //server/service format.
        try smbclient -L \\\\machine to find some printers.." 
   }

   send_exec { smbclient "$SMB_PRINTER_NAME" -c "print -" <$INPUT }
   #status_exec {}
   #cancel_exec {}
 
}