Network printing in Network printing in heterogenous environmentsheterogenous environments

Christoph Beyer

christoph.beyer@desy.deDeutsches Elektronen Synchrotron

IT Notkestr. 85

22607 Hamburg, Germany

Printing @ DESYPrinting @ DESY

~300 printer and ~400 queues

2 SUN E250 running SOLARIS 2.7 with 1GB memory each as server

~250.000 jobs per month

No MAC and Novell support defacto

2 administrators

LPRng 3.6.26 (slidely patched), IFHP 3.4.4, SAMBA 2.2

Printing architecture @ DESYPrinting architecture @ DESY

UNIX clients

LPRSMB

TCP / LPR

- SOLARIS - LINUX- HP-UX- AIX- IRIX

MICROSOFT clients- NT 4.0- 2000- 95 / 98

SPOOLA SPOOLB

- SOLARIS 5.7 - LPRng 3.6.26- IFHP 3.4.4- SAMBA 2.2

The serverThe server Take advantage of the flexibility of UNIX as a backend

for queuing jobs and talking to the printer. Use software to present the UNIX queues to the clients using their native protocols

@ DESY:OS: SOLARIS 5.7Printspooler: LPRng 3.6.26Filter: IFHP 3.4.4Tools: SAMBA 2.2

Identical architecture, every printerqueues is served by either one machine or the other, every printer is known on both machines (failover)

UNIX clientsUNIX clients Running LPRng

Automatic update via cronjob, and client printcap in afs

BSD and SysV binaries on all machines

Nice LPRng features like failover, debugging

WINDOWS clientsWINDOWS clients Driver installation via the ‘add new printer’ wizzard

Download of printer configuration at printtime from the server via RPC

Internal job query and removal features of WINDOWS work

No need for any installation on the client !

SAMBA 2.2SAMBA 2.2 First release that supports the native Windows NT printing

mechanismus implemented via MS-RPC, previous versions only supported LanMan printing calls

Support for downloading printer driver files to Windows 95/98/NT/200 clients upon demand

Uploading of printer drivers via the Windows NT ‘Add Printer Wizzard’ (APW) or the Imprints toolset

Support for NT Access Control Lists (ACL) on printer objects

Fully equivalent behaviour to a NT printspooler in all points (driver installation, printing procedure, queue query)

Windows printing using SAMBA 2.2Windows printing using SAMBA 2.2

client

- printer installation via NT ‘add new printer wizzard’

- downloading printer driver file upon demand (at print-time)

- printjob transfer via SMB

- printer queue lookup with the WINDOWS internal GUIS

- NT 4.0- 2000- 95 / 98

SMB

admin

- NT 4.0- 2000- 95 / 98

SMB

- uploading of printer drivers via the NT ‘add printer wizzard’

- preconfiguration of printer drivers

spoola/b

Some screenshotsSome screenshotsAdd new printer on client:

Watching the queue:

SummarySummary SAMBA and LPRng together can fully support both, UNIX and

WINDOWS clients using their native protocols to present queues, handle delete requests etc.

The SAMBA installation at DESY is a test environment right now and will go into production within the next few weeks

During the tests we did not see any problems presenting ~400 queues to the WINDOWS clients

Performance is OK

In case of hardware problems a third machine, running SAMBA can join the NT domaine and provide printing service using the netbios name of the broken server

Some useful stuffSome useful stuff http://www.lprng.com For LPRng and IFHP

http://www.samba.org for SAMBA

Patched 3.6.26 version:http://www.desy.de/dtg/printing/download.html

HPNP, a snmp tool to query and configure jetdirectinterfacesat: http://www.hp.com

NPADMIN, a very nice tool to query and administrate any kind of printer: http://www.npadmin.sourceforge.net

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