WinXP/2000/NT + MacOS X + Gentoo = Print Server?

digital diesel

Ok I'm doing some consulting work for a company that wants to have a HTTP "sandbox" and they also want a print server.

Now about the print server, the office has MacOS X, Windows clients and maybe eventually some SGI clients. Everyone wants to beable to print to this two certain printers on the network. The printers are going to be serial or USB and the printer server will be in the network, like 10.1.1.84.

How the hell do I make this work? Please any suggestions or direction towards documentation would be fantastic.

curtis119 · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 3:41 pm Post subject:

You can use CUPS over SAMBA. This is a very good implementation. Works like a charm for me.

Here is a howto to setup a network print server under SAMBA 3 and CUPS:

http://us2.samba.org/samba/devel/docs/html/Samba-HOWTO-Collection.html#SimplePrintServer

you should also read all the docs at www.samba.org

good luck
_________________
Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

digital diesel · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 3:51 pm Post subject:

you said good luck?!? god that makes me nervous...

anyhow, if i use samba, will i be able to implement it for macos x too>?

curtis119 · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:05 pm Post subject:

Don't be nervous.

SAMBA and CUPS are both very well supported and come with lots of documentation.

MAC OSX has printing to a windows printer(which is what cups and samba basically is) builtin. You can browse to them from the chooser just like any mac printer.
_________________
Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

digital diesel · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:18 pm Post subject:

Well my main concern is to be able to print from MacOS X. OSX's print center is like a GUI to CUPS on that box. I'm really interested in printing from OSX via IP to the Print server w/ just CUPS. IS that possible? and can I have multiple printers on the same server?
Sorry for all the questions. I just want to make sure i'm not going to spend my wheels researching

curtis119 · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:28 pm Post subject:

Research is always a good thing even if you know (or think you do like me) what you are doing.

Yes macs can print directly to cups servers withot using samba. I thought you wanted windows clients to be able to print as well. If not then samba can be eliminated altogether. This makes setup and config MUCH MUCH easier.

I don't know what the actuall limit is on printers but I have had up to 23 on one machine. Basically it comes down to disk space, processor speed and network connection speed.
_________________
Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

digital diesel · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:37 pm Post subject:

yeah, i actually love the research... i'm doing all that inbetween our posts.

so i'm going to add samba for the windows clients. but i figure if i can do it w/ out it pertains to the SGI boxes and the MacOS X boxes.

So i'm going to try to figure out how to do both. Thanks for help

curtis119 · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:45 pm Post subject:

cool, let me know how it goes.
_________________
Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

plate · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:57 pm Post subject:

With older Macs in the network this would have been a little more complicated, because setting up Mac OS 9 clients to print to a CUPS server would have involved cloning PPDs and tunneling print requests through the dreaded netatalk protocol. But with OS X all you need to do is configure CUPS on the Mac to work with CUPS on the print server. No experience with SGI machines like the ones in your network, but I'd expect IRIX to use CUPS, too, provided you ask nicely.

digital diesel · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:59 pm Post subject:

dude-

I think i figured it out. if i want to do ip printing, i just go to my gentoo box. go to http://localhost:631/ then i add my two different printers and different spool names and then. babamm. Then I make sure the drivers exist on the SGI and MacOS X clients and set the IP printing to spoolname@gentooprintserver and that should do it.

digital diesel · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 4:10 am Post subject:

Ok here I am, I'm trying to install this finally.

I have my gentoo box set up just fine. I have an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 installed as a CUPS printer on usb port /dev/usb/lp0 and I can print test pages from the CUPS admin http://10.1.1.105:631 .

However I need to have the MacOS X Boxes configured correctly to print. So my question, which I can't figure out is. How do I print to a USB port on a remote box running Gentoo & CUPS?

plate · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 7:34 am Post subject:

Easiest way I can think of is to put:

digital diesel · Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:21 pm Post subject:

I was at work until 4am trying to get this to work. I had browsepoll all set up and other sorts of browsing options. For the life of me I couldn't get it to work. Turns out I had the subnets set up incorrectly, so I set the browsing subnet to 255.255.255.255 and I was good to go. Thanks for your help