> > > > > > I followed the steps in > > > > > http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Debian-and-Windows-Shared-Printing/shari > ng_with_window > > s.html to the letter and it didn't work. > > > > Luckily the http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/425 had the two > > lines I needed to add; > > > > Allow From 192.168.1.* in the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. > > > > and do > > > > chmod 777 /home/smbprint > > > > and now I can print from my Win Xp machine to a printer connected to my > > Debian server ... yeah !!! > > a couple things to note here: > > 1. I googled "debian windows print samba" and got those, and many > other great hits, on the first page. You would be well served to learn > to google-fu to help you with this stuff. There are *vast* quantities > of really good linux info on the web, its just a matter of learning > the right search terminology. Also, www.debian-administration.org is a > great site and has a local search function as well. I use it often. > > 2. Many debian oriented guides are geared towards "sarge". With "etch" > out, we should see those starting to update, but it will be a > while. you'll have to make various translations as you go along. > > Thanks for the tips Andrew ... but with all due respect ... IMHO ... basic > stuff like sharing a printer on a small LAN SHOULDN'T be so complex nor > require searching the WWW and the possible risks of getting bad information > and trashing your system! All due respect noted and back atchya! ;) I agree, sharing a printer on a small little LAN should be easy, and in all reality, it *is*. The one we missed is through the localhost:631 interface of cups, in the "manage server" section is a check box for sharing the printer. I'm not sure how well that works with windows printers, but it does work. Remember that in linux there are *MANY* ways to skin the cat and you have to choose what works for you from among the many choices. When you first start, this is really overwhelming and frustrating. Later, when you've got a good handle on it all, you'll find its really easy. Why? Because you *know* what's going on and you can diagnose problems and fix them. The other option is the windows method (not flaming here) where everything is a button but you don't know what's going on under the hood. Sure it works, but when it breaks, what do you do? ' > > I started my task of add this printer by following some advice from this > list ... printconf ... then when that didn't work found the www.linux.org > site which also gave some steps that should have worked, but because of not > managing to get ANY software to work on my system for many months and having > found that Debian documents found on the Internet do not always work as > described, thought I'd better ask which of the steps identified NEED to be > done. Turns out the answer was none of the above, new tip, for a browser > interface to CUPS. Don't get me wrong, this is great, but hopefully you can > appreciate how this might be frustrating and how I might not necessarily > agree with your suggestion that I would be "well served to learn to" Google > better ... :O) I know its frustrating, and I don't disagree with some of your assessment there. Realise, though, that linux in general is a moving target. Its constantly being updated, changed, theoretically improved. That means that tips and docs you find on the web can be out of date. That doesn't mean they aren't valuable and can often provide clues on how to do something. If a suggested command doesn't work, a quick check of the manpage can often provide the necessary bits that have changed. Finally, I find that google gets more and more useful the more I learn about linux. A lot of it is learning the right search terminology. > > I have it working, which is great, but now I'm wondering, what steps did I > do that I didn't NEED to do to get this working, because I removed some > entries from the smb.conf to get it exactly what was shown in the document, > will I be missing some functionality that is put in by default that I might > need down the road when I try and install some other software package and > thus spend hours running around in circles trying to find some document some > place that mentions that I need one of those lines that are now gone. CUPS, and many parts of a linux system, are extremely versatile. THey can be used to do all sorts of thing that you'd not expect. You can personally host a full-blown website with forums, rss feeds, email gateways, the whole shebang right there on your home computer with free software. And it can scale right up to full blown enterprise level (whatever that means) solutions with ease. It is immensely powerful, but with that power comes *lots* of complexity, responsibility etc. Most thigns, though, have pretty sane defaults. Most things that are in config files by default reflect the default settings anyway, so you're probably fine. If you really want to, you could move aside your old smb.conf file and then dpkg-reconfigure samba to get the original back and try again from scratch. > > Mine was a pure clean Etch install (only a couple of days old) and yet > needed to cobble together a solution from two separate documents, both of > which purported to HAVE the answer. Perhaps there should be an "official" > ... Doing Basic Stuff in Debian ... icon on the default desktop that gets > installed with Debian ... yes, there can be lots of discussion about what > constitutes "basic stuff", but adding a printer and sharing it across a LAN. > IMHO, should have been as simple as checking a box labelled "Share this > Printer ?" "Share with Windows computers Yes/No? "Do you want a password > Yes/No?, I think you can more or less do that through the CUPS web interface. Supposedly you can share printers with windows >= XP using the ipp protocol and CUPS directly without samba. I've not done it as I have no windows boxes anymore. I realise this information may be a bit too late, but there it is. We all get lost in the details sometimes and miss the easy way... etc and then have ALL the necessary changes made to the various > config files. Once you know what to do it isn't difficult, but of course it > is knowing what to do that is always the challenge isn't it? > indeed. If it wasn't challenging it wouldn't be fun ;) A
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