Hi Matt, > I work for a small, marine surveying firm that uses the above mentioned > plotter. I am setting up a potato server to handle various tasks, among > which should be serving print jobs to the plotter via Samba.
I have a DesignJet 755CM, connected to the network, served by a Debian server for Windows (Samba), Mac (netatalk) and UNIX (lprng). With a standard sort of /etc/printcap and /etc/samba/smb.conf, everything works just fine: /etc/printcap: plotter :rm=plotter :rp=lp :sd=/var/spool/lpd/plotter :mx#0 :sh Which basically translates to remote machine is plotter (what the hostname of the printer is), remote printer is called lp, and the spool directory is /var/spool/lpd/plotter. I don't know what the last two lines do. If you were plugging the printer into your Linux machine these lines would look a little different, but a generic sort of config should work just fine. The key is to verify that the printer can print Postscript. If so, you don't need a filter for Linux -- you can print stuff right to it. If it doesn't, you'll need a Ghostscript filter. I think the Windows printing just uses the Printer Command Language (PCL) and Samba just sends it on through to the printer. Be sure that if your printer supports both Postscript and PCL that you have it's mode set to "Auto", which is the HP way of saying "accept either Postscript or PCL". After that the Windows machines just need the driver. I've never figured out how to make my Samba server automatically install the printer drivers on my Windows clients, but I think that is possible. Here's the relevant sections of my smb.conf. /etc/samba/smb.conf: [global] print command = /usr/bin/lpr -r -P%p %s lpq command = /usr/bin/lpq -P%p lprm command = /usr/bin/lprm -P%p %j load printers = yes printing = lprng [printers] comment = All Printers path = /tmp create mask = 0700 guest ok = no writeable = no printable = yes print ok = yes browseable = yes I'm not sure if the [printers] section is actually necessary because it shows up on the Windows machines as well as the individual printers, but I've never done any experiments to see the effect of removing it (if it ain't broke. . .). -- Christopher S. Swingley tel: 907-474-2689 cell: 322-1889 Programmer / Analyst email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Alaska Fairbanks www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle Fairbanks, AK 99775 PGP2 key: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/pgpkey.asc GNUPG key: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/gnupgkey.asc