Can't see Windows printers (SMB) from SuSe 9.3

Benjamin Scott dragonhawk at iname.com
Tue Aug 9 00:01:01 EDT 2005


On Aug 8 at 3:32pm, hewitt_tech wrote:
> This is probably a very common question.

   From what I've seen, yes.  Unfortunately, the number of answers to this 
question is many...

>  I just installed a shiny new SuSE 9.3 system and tried to setup printing to 
> a Windows shared printer. Oddly, although I can see the Windows file shares 
> I can't see the shared printer.

   What version of doze?  Are you on an NT or Active Directory domain?

> BTW, when I want to see the file shares I get a pop up box that asks for a 
> username and password. When I supply these I can see the file shares.

   You're obviously using some kind of GUI file browser thingy.  I'm going to 
guess that the printer thingy you're using uses a slightly different set of 
components, which isn't handling password authentication the same way (or at 
all).

   One thing that often makes debugging easier is to drop back to the clunky 
old command-line tools.  They're cryptic, but they're very precise, easily 
tweaked, and can provide verbose diagnostics.

   Try the following on the troublesome 'doze box.  It attempts to list all the 
shares (file, print, and IPC) on the server, with no authentication:

 	smbclient -N -L //dozebox

If that fails with an "access denied" or "bad password" sort of error, try 
this (substitute your username on the doze box):

 	smbclient -U username -L //dozebox

It should prompt for a password.  Which ones work should provide clues at to 
whether you need to authenticate at all to list shares.

   You can try this

 	smbclient //dozebox/printshare

to connect to a printer share.  Add the "-N" or "-U username" switches as 
appropriate.  Once you're connected to the printer share, you can try doing 
things like

 	queue

and

 	print /etc/issue

to list the print queue and submit a file for printing (note that doing so may 
cause your printer to print garbage, depending on model/config).  But this 
will at least tell you what is possible at a low level.  Use the "quit" 
command to get out of "smbclient".

   If all this stuff works, then you can be sure the problem is at a higher 
level, which would then depend on the same of the package/program/whatever 
you're using.  If this stuff doesn't work, investigate and/or post error 
messages and maybe we can work out why.

-- 
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>



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