Had to use IP address to get CUPS to print to Windows Shared Printer

[larkl]

 ???After a few hours of piddling with it, got my VL 5.8 Std box to print to my XP Pro printer. Had to use the IP address, not the NetBIOS name. 

Code:

smb://user%passwd/192.168.1.1/printer

Found some posts on the internet that indicated that this might work.  Seems odd since I've done this before with other distros (probably an older samba realease also) and it worked with the NetBIOS name.  I figured out that I couldn't see the shares with smbclient unless I passed the ip address.  Thought it was a windows firewall issue, but I guess not.  Since I use dynamic IP's, this is really a good solution. 

[larkl]

Added the IP address of the windows box to /etc/hosts and now I can use the NetBIOS name.  Of course, if the windows box gets a different IP address, I'm screwed.  BTW - The WINS server option IS turned on in my Samba. 

[stoichyu]

It's actually a problem with the firewall configuration. You can either disable the VL firewall OR edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/firewall
You should find this line:

PERMIT="192.168.0.0/24 445/tcp 137-139/tcp 445/udp 137-139/udp"

and change it to:

PERMIT="192.168.1.0/24 445/tcp 137-139/tcp 445/udp 137-139/udp"

I'm assuming your network is 192.168.1.* based on what you posted earlier. You should also remove the entry in the /etc/hosts file, but I think you already know that.

[bigpaws]

stoichyu

This person is sending packets out not in no need for firewall changes.

Bigpaws

[stoichyu]

stoichyu

This person is sending packets out not in no need for firewall changes.

Bigpaws

But Netbios name resolution requires that you are able to receive packets since you are querying the address of the said computer. This is what I did to get samba to use netbios resolution properly.

[larkl]

Thanks, stoichu. 

It was the firewall.  Just been using this distro for a few days and hadn't realized I had one (duh!).  Your mod fixed it, thanks.