[John Adorador]

Greeetings! I'm having some problems with MacOS X Server and Samba. I have every aspect of Samba I need up and running except for printing on my PC clients. I've spent many hours trying to figure this out. With the documentation as scarce as it is (for Samba and OS X), is there anyone out there who has properly configured printers to work with Samba on OS X Server?

I am able to set up printers and successfully print locally from the server via the print manager. I followed the directions on adding the printer to the domain. When I look at SWAT, the printer shows up and I can make changes to it if I want to. The printer shows up in network neighborhood with my shares. But when I try add the printer from the server to my Windows 98 SE client, it spits out this error message when it attempts to run a test print:
-------
There was an error writing to \\myserver\myprinter for printer (myprinter):
The network name cannot be found.

This printer will be set to work offline.
To save your print job in the local print queue, click ok.
------

Anyone have an idea of what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for your time!

John

[tonymac]

Disclaimer: I have never used MacOS X Server or Samba. The following suggestions are based on my experience working in Windows NT and Mac based networks.

Possibilities:
1. Does \\myserver\myprinter use an IP address or a name? If you don't have a WINS server running for the PCs they won't be able to translate myserver into an IP address.

2. Do the PCs have read/write permissions to the spool directory for the printer?

Sorry I can't be more help. Anyone else?

[John Adorador]

It didn't hurt to try setting up the printer on the client via the printer wizard. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. As far as I can tell, the permissions seem fine on the print spooler.

When setting up the printer on the server, I used the AppleTalk protocol. I was able to print locally from the server no problem. When I went to export the printer to the domain, it wouldn't work when testing it. I know it's something in the configuration of the Mac OS X Server, I just can't figure out what it is. Besides having the printer set up on AppleTalk, I also have an IP address assigned to it.

Thanks
John

[This message has been edited by John Adorador (edited 07-27-2000).]

[swinte]

This is related but somewhat off-topic: Has anyone gotten Samba to work with the OSX Developer Previews floating around? It seems that since OSX is BSD Unix, getting Samba going should simply be a matter of finding the appropriate source, compiling, and configuring. That said, I haven't heard any success stories or how-to's floating around on the net.

Samba is included in the DP4 install. No recompile necessary.

Unfortunately, the "smbmount" command (and its associated smb filesystem) is currently only available on Linux, which means you have to use the FTP-like smbclient to connect to Windows servers. What I'd really like to see is functionality built into the Finder to browse Windows networks.

[swinte]

Awesome! I have been looking at using OSX (consumer) in a mixed production environment as a file server and knowing that OSX includes Samba out of the box makes me really happy.

Now I just hope that Apple implements a nice GUI configuration tool for file sharing similar to what they did with AppleShare IP for the classic MacOS that wraps all the file sharing options for AppleShare, SMB, and FTP into one convenient panel. And includes it for free with consumer rather than selling it as part of a server pak. And a free quad processor G4 with every copy of OSX would be nice too...