Universal Printserver (win/linux/osx)

[Billy Ayotte]

So I've been toying around with our cups server attempting to install
samba and have our windows clients print to it. So far it sorta
works..ish. The problem I'm having is joining to our AD domain (Resara
server) and using those domain admins accounts to upload drivers for
automatic driver deployment.

Anyone running a samba server as a printserver that has it working?

[Billy Ayotte]

OK, a few months have passed and I have gotten windows printing via CUPS, but automatic driver installs just doesn't work. Has anyone gotten this to work? Sticking with a Windows printserver is pretty much the only thing keeping us tied into server 2k3/2k8 and all those CALs. Honestly I'd like to go truly paperless but the ease of use for paperless just isn't there, yet. Anyway, anyone has an idea for a non Windows CAL printserver that supports all three (maybe four with AirPrint)? 

[Markus Ford]

I'm stuck at the moment. Our Resara server has an VM running the Ubuntu CUPS server. But it won't handle our Windows machines. I've been limping along with Windows printing as other fires have flared up. (Win machines send to Google Docs and print from a Mac or the user connects by USB cable.) But I really want to get to a point where all machines (Linux, Mac, Win, Tablet,  Smart Phone) can print without having to load drivers. Just select and print. When this happens, I can start analyzing and sharing how printers are being used.

I'm currently tinkering with two solutions:
1) I have a 2k3 machine loaded up and it will take on the Windows printing unless I can find a better solution.
2) I'm giving some thought to have a Mac Server 10.6 machine handle all printing and letting the Resara Server just handle AD.

I'm keenly interested in what others are doing.
-- Markus

Markus Ford
Technology Coordinator

Deer Isle - Stonington Schools
249 North Deer Isle Road
Deer Isle, Maine 04627
- ES: 207-348-6301
- HS: 207-348-2303
- e: mf...@dis-schools.org

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[David Trask]

I'm going to try and test Samba printing in the next couple days.  I have a print server VM ready to go...just need to add Samba and set it up....will keep you posted.

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Billy Ayotte <billy....@gmail.com> wrote:

--

[David Trask]

Billy,

Look here for some ideas  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110931

About halfway down...you'll find a section on installing Windows Printer drivers...let me know if that helps at all

David

[David Trask]

Here's another one

http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/windows/article.php/3621876/Push-Windows-Printer-Drivers-with-CUPS.htm

[Billy Ayotte]

I'm debating on using the correct windows drivers for each printer or
just using the generic Adobe. I was reading that cups has issues
detecting page counts when printing RAW using the windows print
drivers. I'm bringing up a test machine too. The tricky part that
really got me last time was the auto-magical deploy of drivers across
xp, vista, win7 32bit and 64 bit. I'm thinking using the generic Adobe
would greatly simplify... everything.

On Apr 25, 10:10 am, David Trask <copperdo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's another one
>

> http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/windows/article.php/3621876...

>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 10:09 AM, David Trask <copperdo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Billy,
>
> > Look here for some ideas  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110931
>
> > About halfway down...you'll find a section on installing Windows Printer
> > drivers...let me know if that helps at all
>
> > David
>

> > On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 10:01 AM, David Trask <copperdo...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> I'm going to try and test Samba printing in the next couple days.  I have
> >> a print server VM ready to go...just need to add Samba and set it
> >> up....will keep you posted.
>

[Brendan Powers]

Using a generic driver is probably the only way to get real "Click and Print" functionality on all platforms. However, the real problem with this is that you move the print driver issue from the client computer to the Linux server. Now you have to have good Linux drivers for the printer in question. Usually this isn't an issue, but it can be. I've seen several instances where the Linux drivers do not provide the same number of print options as the Windows drivers, or where the quality of printing is noticeably reduced with the Linux drivers. However, if you can work around those issues, it does work.

--
-----------------------
Brendan Powers
Resara LLC

1.888.357.9195
www.resara.com

[Billy Ayotte]

Looks like "cupsaddsmb" does exactly what I'm looking for, exporting CUPS printers to samba. Here's the manpage for 12.04:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/cupsaddsmb.8.html

I found the OpenPrinting database is pretty good at resolving those weird print driver issues. I can live with one set of problem drivers now I'm dealing with 3 :(. Luckily I have 4 different models of printers that are old and well supported with an occasional hiccup with PDFs.

[Brendan Powers]

This may help a bit. http://www.thebitguru.com/blog/view/153-Printer%20ready%20to%20serve!

[David Trask]

Also...another thing to think about....what about IPP printing?  I know it requires pushing, manually adding, or building into an image....but if you go with IPP printing the drivers are essentially part of Windows.  If you already have a CUPS printer there is little to no additional configuration of the server....you simply go into Windows....click add printer....in the space for the name of the "share" you add   http://x.x.x.x:631/printers/nameofprinterqueue   (where x.x.x.x is the IP address of your print server and "nameofprinterqueue" is the name of the print queue on the server which is easy to find by simply going to http://x.x.x.x:631/printers)   I just tested using Windows 7 and chose the MS Publisher Color printer driver (it was a Xerox 8560DN color printer) and it worked fine.  For B/W printers you can use the MS Imagesetter driver.  

Now...granted, this is not as simple as point and click, but then again Windows printing is never quite that simple.  Even if it is supposed to be, in my experience, Windows printing from a print server has always been notoriously unreliable...especially compared with the ease and simplicity of CUPS.  Nonetheless, it would be simple to set up IPP printing....make a little "how-to" to post online or print with the addresses and let your users add their printers.  We used to do something similar in the days prior to our print server when folks used to add their own printers to the MLTI laptops via IP address.  Empower the users whenever possible.  ;-)

Billy....let me know if you get cupsaddsmb thing working...take notes  ;-)

[Brendan Powers]

With the information from the link I posted. It should be possible to "clone" a print driver from a windows machine. Simply set up the printer on a windows machine and then share it. Then, use the rpcclient getdriver command to pull the INF file from the windows machine, and copy all the needed files. Once you've got the files, you could then copy them into the right place, and register them with the cups printer.

[Billy Ayotte]

Got it working :), kind of. I'm still messing with permissions within
samba and have no idea on how to integrate it with a AD server. I
expect you already have a working CUPS server with a printer before
doing this.

Any, here's the beef:

First get the CUPS postscript drivers for windows from the web site,
its a rpm but you can use alien to install it or you can extract it
manually from the source. Either way you will get the CUPS drivers in /
usr/share/cups/drivers (note: the drivers directory doesn't exist, you
may need to manually create it.) Now you need to pull the windows
postscript drivers from your machines. Using the info on the website I
couldn't find them so I pulled them out of the Sp3.cab file. Place the
windows postscript drivers in /usr/share/cups/drivers too.

Now you need to install samba and config the smb.conf file as per the
directions in the link at the bottom of this post. Lastly do a "sudo
smbpasswd" to create a root user for samba and set a password. When
this is done restart the restart the smbd daemon and run cupsaddsmb
like this:
"sudo cupsaddsmb -a -v"

If it errors then you probably have a permissions issue. I did this on
12.04 beta2 and found a "Export to samba" button right in the
administration tab of the CUPS web interface which worked once I got
around to setting the root passwd correctly.

My brain is fried but it seems to work with 32bit clients. You would
need to repeat this for x64 and each different platform you want to
support. Also someone need to figure out how to get the permissions
talking to AD and configure "guest" print queues. I probably missed
something here and the error messages are wonderfully obscure so just
ask. The hardest part was getting the Samba permissions working
correctly, and I have no idea on how to make it seamless with AD and
able to see usernames in the CUPS queue.

http://www.cups.org/doc-1.5/man-cupsaddsmb.html

[David Trask]

open1to1d...@googlegroups.com writes:

You would

need to repeat this for x64 and each different platform you want to

support

Yeah....and this is one of the reasons that Windows printing sucks  ;-)

David Trask

Technology Director/Teacher

Vassalboro Community School

dtr...@vcsvikings.org

(207) 923-4305

[Billy Ayotte]

Also it appear the print defaults from CUPS are not transmitted to the
Windows clients, for instance the duplexer. I can however go in an
select it. For Copiers and other printers with special features using
the native drivers for windows would probably work better or using IPP
printing via the http url.

[Billy Ayotte]

I'm working on making a package with all the drivers for various
platforms... for restore purposes. Once you have them you got them for
life so I can't be too picky. Though I could use the vista and win7 32-
bit versions if anyone has them. I don't have a machine to pull those
out of or test with. I'm hoping it's a universal driver for each
architecture and not OS dependent but I have my doubts.

[Brendan Powers]

I'm not entirely sure what your doing, but I have a 32bit Win7 VM I could get a driver from if you need it.

[Billy Ayotte]

That would be awesome. I'm trying to create a basic support everything print server. The CUPS postscript files still rely on the Microsoft generic postscript. I'm making a list of things that the server should be able to do when finished. Basically I'm aiming for the ultimate print server that doesn't require CALS. That means 4 platform support (windows, osx, Linux, iOS) with AD intergration. If it was easy it wouldn't be any fun.

[David Trask]

open1to1d...@googlegroups.com writes:

That would be awesome. I'm trying to create a basic support everything print server. The CUPS postscript files still rely on the Microsoft generic postscript. I'm making a list of things that the server should be able to do when finished. Basically I'm aiming for the ultimate print server that doesn't require CALS. That means 4 platform support (windows, osx, Linux, iOS) with AD intergration. If it was easy it wouldn't be any fun.

If you are using a later version of CUPS...iOS will work out of the box....or at least it did for me.

[Billy Ayotte]

Indeed it did.

Now my next hurtle is getting this thing to speak with AD. If anyone
is interested and has the skillset I would like to get a flesh this
out a bit. I'm looking to to make this simple to maintain and setup
with things like copying print options for samba from the CUPS
settings and creation of VLANs from a gui via something like script
with zenity prompts (I can script but gui's ain't my thing). The hard
part is getting this beast to allow AD Domain Admins to have rights to
manage cups and the samba queues.

The goal is to create a solid multi-platform printserver that will
talk to AD and is braindead simple to config and operate in most
networks. Ideally all installed via a .deb. As far as I know there
isn't a project out there that has done this but it seems do able.