Cannot print to Windows 7 shared printer over VPN from Unixware 7.1.4

[Wolfie]

Hey,

I have a home PC running Windows 7 Pro 64bit with a shared printer
attached to it. I connect to the office through the Sonicwall Global
VPN Client and am able to connect to our office server (running Unix).
I have the shared printer configured on the Unix server but cannot
print to it through the VPN. It can see my home Windows 7 PC, but
cannot establish a connection to print.

smbclient -L command shows "session setup failed: NT_STATUS_OK"

To troubleshoot I also tried printing from a Windows XP machine at the
office, as well as a Windows 7 machine and both worked.

I have had this layout working perfectly when I used to use Windows
XP, and I am guessing that there is a security option in Windows 7
that is not allowing this (I had turned off the Win 7 firewall, but
didn't help).

I hope this is enough information.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,

Adam

[Steve M. Fabac, Jr.]

Well Adam, you have experienced the WOW factor (Wonderfulness Of Windows).

I have not used Windows 7, If it has the "Print Services for UNIX" component
(XP does under add/remove Windows Components under other network file and print
services), then set up a UNIX network printer using rlpr transport to print to
your system. Set up your local printer and share the printer to the network,
then hope that Microsoft has not "improved" the rlp print protocol by adding
security "enhancements" to require authorization for print requests.

Search this news group for rlpr for more information.

Sample RLPR fragment from printer interface script:

while [ "$copies" -gt 0 ]

do
for file
do
0<${file} eval ${FILTER}
done
copies=`expr $copies - 1`
done ) | /usr/local/bin/rlpr -H $PRTHOST -P $PRTPORT

In the above, PRTHOST resolves to your IP address (either VPN endpoint on the
office LAN or your home IP address if your router/firewall/modem forwards port 515
to your Windows 7 machine), and PRTPORT is the shared name of your printer.

--
Steve Fabac
S.M. Fabac & Associates
816/765-1670

[mbennett]

Adam,

First, I realize this is not a direct answer to your question. But
after beating my brains out a couple of times trying to get Windows
Vista to work with the older version of Samba you will find on
OpenServer, I finally decided life was too short. I haven't tried
that with Windows 7 but would expect the same results. Probably the
newest versions of Samba have conquered this problem but I'm not smart
enough to figure out how to get them to compile on OpenServer.

My workaround was to install a program called Printfil, which you can
get at
http://www.printfil.com/english.htm

It's made in Italy and you'll have to pay an exchange rate if you're
in the US. But the program works and you can test it for 30 days.
With the exchange rate you're eventually going to pay about $100 per
seat for a single system, which is steep. You may need to request a
printer configuration file from them if you have problems, but their
support is pretty good and docs are understandable.

Print your report to a file in a folder that is shared in Samba, then
Printfil grabs it and sends it to the Windows printer. Dead simple.

Another option might be network printing with netcat since you're on a
VPN, but you'll need to have a network connection on your printer.

I'm not saying there are no other options, this is just one to try and
consider.

Good luck,
Mark

[Markus Döhr]

> I have a home PC running Windows 7 Pro 64bit with a shared printer
> attached to it. I connect to the office through the Sonicwall Global
> VPN Client and am able to connect to our office server (running Unix).
> I have the shared printer configured on the Unix server but cannot
> print to it through the VPN. It can see my home Windows 7 PC, but
> cannot establish a connection to print.
>
> smbclient -L command shows "session setup failed: NT_STATUS_OK"

You may try to change the authentication to NTLM (Windows 7 uses NTMLv2
as default). Check/compare your settings on the working Windows 7 vs.
your machine (see
http://www.nbtnet.newboundary.com/support/docs/ppm/ppm/troubleshooting/tasks/ppm0114.htm).

Another problem can be that you're authenticated against the domain when
you're in the office but you're not when you're working remotely since
you log on with a cached profile because the connection is not available
before login.

--
Markus