7.1.5 Test Printing

Here is how you can test printing from the Samba server. Let's assume the most complex case and use a guest account. First, run the Samba testparm command on your configuration file that contains the print shares, as we did in Chapter 2, Installing Samba on a Unix System. This will tell you if there are any syntactical problems with the configuration file. For example, here is what you would see if you left out the path configuration option in the previous example:

# testparm 
Load smb config files from /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf 
Processing configuration file "/usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf" 
Processing section "[global]" 
Processing section "[homes]" 
Processing section "[data]" 
Processing section "[printers]" 
No path in service printers - using /tmp 
Loaded services file OK. 
Press enter to see a dump of your service definitions
Global parameters: 
	load printers: Yes 
	printcap name: /etc/printcap
Default service parameters: 
	guest account: ftp 
	min print space: 0 
	print command: lpr -r -P%p %s 
	lpq command: lpq -P%p 
	lprm command: lprm -P%p %j 
lppause command: 
	lpresume command: 
 Service parameters [printers]: 
	path: /tmp 	
	print ok: Yes 
	read only: true 
	public: true 

Second, try the command testprns printername. This is a simple program that verifies that the specified printer is available in your printcap file. If your printcap file is not in the usual place, you can specify its full pathname as the second argument to the testprns command:

# testprns lp /etc/printcap
Looking for printer lp in printcap file /etc/printcap
Printer name lp is valid.

Next, log on as the guest user, go to the spooling directory, and ensure that you can print using the same command that testparm says Samba will use. As mentioned before, this will tell you if you need to change the guest account, as the default account may not be allowed to print.

Finally, print something to the Samba server via smbclient, and see if the following actions occur:

• The job appears (briefly) in the Samba spool directory specified by the path.

• The job shows up in your print systems spool directory.

• The job disappears from the spool directory that Samba used.

If smbclient cannot print, you can reset the print command option to collect debugging information:

print command = /bin/cat %s >>/tmp/printlog; rm %s

or:

print command = echo "printed %s on %p" >>/tmp/printlog

A common problem with Samba printer configuration is forgetting to use the full pathnames for commands; simple commands often don't work because the guest account's PATH doesn't include them. Another frequent problem is not having the correct permissions on the spooling directory.

There is more information on debugging printers in the Samba documentation ( Printing.txt). In addition, the Unix print systems are covered in detail in AEleen Frisch's Essential Systems Administration (published by O'Reilly).