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Printing from Linux workstation...

Steve L

Printing from Linux workstation...
« on: June 21, 2002, 06:15:52 PM »
Hello,
I have been using SME for 2 years with all Win 98 and Mac clients on my home LAN.

Now I am replacing my Win machines with Red Hat 7.3 boxes. This brought me to a situation that I am haveing trouble with.

Printing to my HP Laser Jet that is attached to my SME box.

How or where is a good place to research this. The Win clients were easy via the Samba share. But, with the RH clients I a not sure about.

Thanks in advance,

Steve L

Dan Brown

Re: Printing from Linux workstation...
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2002, 07:16:33 PM »
On a Mandrake workstation, I just used the printer via Samba.  Don't know how easy that is under RH, though.

Robert Boerner

Re: Printing from Linux workstation...
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2002, 12:48:22 AM »
IMHO, you have two options:

A) As Dan suggested, use Samba to connect to the printer (easy enough if you use Mandrake or Red Hat)

B) Setup LPR to print to a remote host. In This case I would definitely recommend checking out www.linuxprinting.org for excellent documentation on how to do this.

The gist is if you want to do this manually you would have to edit /etc/printcap and specify the remote host (in this case the e-smith box) by IP or hostname, and the name of the output que.

There are a lot of variables to consider depending on your type of printer et al, but check out the Linux printing HOWTO on the website. It is very well done.

Mahmood Al-Yousif

Re: Printing from Linux workstation...
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2002, 04:27:33 PM »
I've been struggling with the same issues as well for the last couple of weeks.

The best thing I've found is to use redhat-switch-printer and set the default to lpr, then use the printtool (or printconf-gui) to add the printer with a remote queue.

You're on easy-street with the HP Laser as there are drivers built-into RedHat 7.3 for most HP printers. I had to struggle with an old GCC Elite XL 808!

Through the printtool utility you can configure the printer as a Samba printer, lpr, and remote lpr.

I haven't found a way of getting the printtool to load up the PPD file though and the docs at linuxprinting.org are too complex as they go into too many options. I don't blame them, this printing issue with Linux I think is the greatest detterent to adopting linux for the desktop! (my personal opinion here so please don't flame! I'm in the process of converting my office completely to Linux and this is one of the problems I faced.)

BillR

Re: Printing from Linux workstation...
« Reply #4 on: October 23, 2002, 09:57:14 AM »
A slight variation on the thread.
How have yo folks been connecting to the E-Smith file system from your Linux boxes.
NFS? Samba?