Samba/Printing directions (yeah, i know....)

[Subito Piano]

I've been working on this a long time - reading up and i can't find answers that work for me....

I have a Windoze XP box with an HP 2100 LaserJet and a second machine with Vector 6.0 Standard in a classroom here at school.  There are a mix of WinXP and (mostly Mepis/Antix) Linux boxes all around the school.  (I chose Vector this time due to the machine's moderate specs and cause i've been impressed by it.)  Dang, it's a nightmare getting to even see the Samba shares anywhere -- localhost:631 only sees the school's copier and Linux-hosted computers but NOT any units on Windoze machines.  I looked for smb4k but it's not in the repos.  I did set samba and CUPs to be enabled automatically at bootup; when i try /usr/bin/smbclient -L 205-t -U admin i get an error message.  Perhaps the box is not in the workgroup (smb:cong seems to indicate it is) -- i am used to a GUI to name the computer and join a workgroup, which of course Vector doesn't have.  When i set the machine up to begin with, it didn't ask me for either...??  You can tell i'm used to GUI BUT i'm not afraid of commandline, as long directions are clear.  What can i do? (Yeah, i could put the printer on the Linux box and have the Win unit print there, but i'd rather not.)

Thanks in advance.   

[bigpaws]

Starting from the beginning:

There are a mix of WinXP and (mostly Mepis/Antix) Linux boxes all around the school.

Is this a Microsoft domain using Active Directory?

localhost:631

This is used to setup Cups for printing. You can specify the remote printer by the protocol it uses
Http,ipp.Lpr/Lpd. After you set the protocol you need to specify the ip address of the printers host
(the one that has the printer attached).

when i try /usr/bin/smbclient -L 205-t -U admin i get an error message.

What is the error message?

Perhaps the box is not in the workgroup (smb:cong seems to indicate it is) -- i am used to a GUI to name the computer and join a workgroup, which of course Vector doesn't have.

VASM should allow that iirc is under network.

For printing this may help get you started:

Printing To Windows PCs
Connecting To Windows

Figure 2. Network Printing

SMB and CIFS are the Windows file and printer sharing protocols. We use Samba to speak to the Windows PCs using these protocols. Before configuring CUPS we should make sure we can connect to the Windows PC with smbclient.

The following is an example of creating a connection to a Windows PC:

/usr/bin/smbclient -L rice -U fred

added interface ip=10.6.7.234 bcast=10.6.7.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
Got a positive name query response from 10.6.7.8 ( 10.6.7.8 )
Password: (not shown)

Sharename  Type  Comment
PRINTER$   Disk
INKJET     Printer
STUFF      Disk
IPC$       IPC    Remote Inter Process Communication

The command shown asks for a list of shares on a Windows PC named "rice", with the user id "fred". The result shows a printer named "INKJET".

If Windows naming service is unavailable you will need to specify the IP address of the Windows PC with the -I switch as in:

/usr/bin/smbclient -I 10.6.7.8 -L rice -N

For more information see the Samba documentation about smbclient usage.

HTH

Bigpaws

[Subito Piano]

Should Active Directory be on or off?  I never had to touch it before -- is it a part of XP? 

The other suggestions i've tried already - but i will post the error message when i'm back at school and get a chance to look at it again (tomorrow, hopefully).  Thanks.

[bigpaws]

My reference was to the type of domain.

MS uses domain controllers, which controls the
entire domain. It is not something that single
desktop machines configure.

Bigpaws