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Samba as a print server - SambaWiki

Samba as a print server

From SambaWiki

Contents
1 General
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Some definitions
1.3 Driver models
2 Print server backend
2.1 CUPS
2.1.1 Adding a new printer
2.2 LPD
2.2.1 Adding a new printer
3 Configuring Samba as print server
3.1 General
3.1.1 Enabling spoolssd (optional)
3.1.2 Granting print operator privileges
3.1.3 Setup the [printers] share
3.1.4 Setup the [print$] share
3.2 Sharing a printer with Samba

General
Introduction
This HowTo will provide you an easy guide to setup Samba to act as a Windows print server including
Point'n'Click printer driver installation for users.
This HowTo is valid for Samba 3 and 4 print server installations.

Some definitions
Printer share
Each printer is shared by a name. During the printing process, the client sends the printjob to it.
Print server backend
Samba can use e. g. CUPS, LPD/Lprng and other as backend. The print server forwards the job to local
or network printers.
Windows printer driver
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A piece of software, that converts the printed data to a printer specific form. The driver for each shared
printer can be preconfigured with default values.
Point'n'Print
Windows 2000 and later support the abillity to automatically download and install drivers from the server
including preconfiguring, when connecting a printer. The installation can be done by ordinary users,
without special permissions.
Printer forms
Windows is already shipped with an amount of forms, that define the typical paper sizes. If a formular
isn't known to the print server, the client could not use this, altought the printer is able to do it.

Driver models
Supported by Samba: Printer driver version 3 (Windows 2000 to Windows 8)
Currently not supported by Samba: Printer driver version 4 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/windows/hardware/hh706306%28v=vs.85%29.aspx) (Windows 8)

Print server backend

The following sub-chapters will give you a short overview on possible backends, including adding a new
network printer, we'll use in our later examples for sharing it by Samba.
The examples setup a RAW printer (content is send directly to the device). We don't use filters or drivers on the
backend, because a RAW printer allows us to render the output on the workstation and use the printer specific
driver.
We assume here, that you have the print server backend already basically configured and it's running, so printers
can be added next.

CUPS
CUPS (http://www.cups.org) is currently the most widely used spool system in *nix environments and shipped
with most distributions. Samba has built-in support and defaults to CUPS if the development package (aka
header files and libraries) could be found at compile time.
Basically all sorts of files can be printed with CUPS, but using a Postscript or a RAW printer driver will give you
the most benefit in combination with the Windows printer driver, because then all settings can be controlled on
the Windows client.

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Adding a new printer

Open the CUPS admin webfrontend (https://servername:631/admin).
On the Administration tab click the Add Printer button.
Choose the way, how your printer is connected and enter the appropriate URL. Examples:
# LPD protocol
lpd://hostname/queue
# Internet Printing Protocol
ipp://hostname/ipp/port
# Forwarding the jobs to a Windows print server.
# Hint: Vista and higher, don't allow anonymous connects by default, so you must provide a username and password.
smb://username:password@domain/servername/printername

Enter a name for the printer

When you reached the step, where to choose the vendor and model, choose Raw for both, because
the rendering is already done later by the Windows driver.
Save the new added printer.

LPD
This was the first widely used printing system and still runs on many servers. It is very simple to install and
configure. There are different implementations of LPD servers, like the often used LPRng
(http://www.lprng.org/) .

Adding a new printer

To add a new network printer, you simply need to add the following line to your 'printcap' (typically
'/etc/printcap'). For the different options used in the example, see 'man printcap'.
PRINTERNAME:sd=/path/to/spool/directory:sh:mx=0:mc=0:rm=IP_or_DNS_Name

After adding the new printer entry, run the following command to create the LPD spool directory and
restart/reload the service, to take the changes affect.
# checkpc -f
# service lpd restart

The following command allows you query the state of the printer:
# lpq -P PRINTERNAME
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Printer: PRINTERNAME@SAMPRINTSERVER (dest PRINTERNAME@IP_or_DNS_Name)

Queue: no printable jobs in queue
Ready
no entries

Configuring Samba as print server

General
Enabling spoolssd (optional)
Note: Some features of spoolssd were broken before 4.0.17 and 4.1.7. That's why it is recommended to
use at least this versions!
spoolssd is a feature, introduced in Samba 4.0, that increases the performance in printing affairs. In the past,
when a print job came in, a smbd child process was forked, that initializes the printcap cache, spoolss, etc. If
you are having a huge printcap cache and it needs to be updated first, the client could hang for several seconds.
Since Samba 4, you can configure, that spoolssd is started as forked processes. If enabled, you'll see additional
smbd processes, which will handle only spoolss requests. The master process is a simple daemon with a small
memory footprint, that only forks and kills childs serving the spoolss pipe. When a connection comes in, it can
directly start to talk to the daemon and e. g. ask any information about the printer without any delay, what
causes a performance improvement.
To enable spoolssd, add the following to the [global] section of your smb.conf:
rpc_server:spoolss = external
rpc_daemon:spoolssd = fork

After you have restarted Samba, you will discover additional smbd processes, that handle spoolss requests:
With spoolssd enabled after startup:
30903 smbd
30912 \_ smbd
30913
\_ smbd
30914
\_ smbd
30915
\_ smbd
30916
\_ smbd
30917
\_ smbd
30918
\_ smbd
30920
\_ smbd
30921
\_ smbd
30922
\_ smbd
30923
\_ smbd
30924
\_ smbd

With spoolssd disabled (default):

30955 smbd
30963 \_ smbd

You can adjust the daemons behavior through the following parameters (the values in the examples are the
defaults):
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spoolssd:prefork_min_children = 5
spoolssd:prefork_max_children = 25
spoolssd:prefork_spawn_rate = 5
spoolssd:prefork_max_allowed_clients = 100
spoolssd:prefork_child_min_life = 60

#
#
#
#
#
#

Minimum number of child processes

Maximum number of child processes
Start (fork) x new childs if one connection comes in (up to prefork_max_
Number of clients, a child process should be responsible for
Minimum lifetime of a child process (60 seconds
is the minimum, even a lower value has been configured)

spoolssd is still a new feature. If you may encounter any bug, please report it at https://bugzilla.samba.org/, to
get it fixed soon.

Granting print operator privileges

Users or groups, who should be able to administrate printers on your server, have to be granted the
SePrintOperatorPrivilege privilege. This is required on member servers, as they have their own, local SAM
database. It is recommended, to grant it to a domain group, because changes can be done quick and easily with
the typical user management tools like ADUC.
The following example grants the privilege to the domain group Domain Admins:
# net rpc rights grant 'SAMDOM\Domain Admins' SePrintOperatorPrivilege -Uadministrator

Existing privileges you can reviewed by

# net rpc rights list accounts -Uadministrator

Setup the [printers] share

This share defines general information about your printing backend. See the [printers] section in the man page
for additional information.
Add the new section to your smb.conf
[printers]
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
printing = CUPS|LPRNG|...

If you choose CUPS as backend, make sure, that your smbd is compiled with CUPS support:
# smbd -b | grep CUPS
HAVE_CUPS_CUPS_H
HAVE_CUPS_LANGUAGE_H
HAVE_CUPS
HAVE_LIBCUPS

If you don't get any output, make sure, that the CUPS header files and libraries are installed and recompile
Samba with --with-cups.
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The next step is to create the samba spool directory, defined in the [printer] share. Set the appropriate
permissions, depending to your needs.
# mkdir -p /var/spool/samba/
# chmod 1777 /var/spool/samba/

Setup the [print$] share

To enable Point'n'Print support, a share named print$ must exist. This share name is hardcoded in Windows
clients and can't be choosen.
Add the share to your smb.conf
[print$]
path = /srv/samba/Printer_drivers
comment = Printer Drivers
writeable = yes

Create the folder, that will contain the drivers later:

# mkdir -p /srv/samba/Printer_drivers/

Next we create the required directory structure for the print$ share (newer versions of Samba will create
it on the fly):
BASEDIR=/srv/samba/Printer_drivers
for i in COLOR IA64 W32ALPHA W32MIPS W32PPC W32X86/{2,3} WIN40 x64; do
mkdir -p $BASEDIR/$i;
done

At last, set the permissions. It is recommended that normal users just have read-only access to the share,
while the group you have granted print operator privileges to, has write permissions to upload printer
drivers. The following examples are granting write permissions to the Domain Admins group.
If you're running Samba 4 and later, you are having the choice to use POSIX or Windows ACLs
on the print$ share. The benefit of Windows ACLs are, that you can use the full Windows ACLs
set. Have a look at the Setup and configure file shares documentation for further details. The
suggested filesystem permissions for Windows ACLs on the print$ share are:
Creator Owner: Full control (Subfolders and files only)
Authenticated Users: Read & execute, List folder contents, Read (This folder, subfolders
and files)
System: Full control (This folder, subfolders and files)
Domain Admins: Full control (This folder, subfolders and files)
ACL example for POSIX ACLs on the print$ share (e. g. for Samba 3.x)
# chgrp -R SAMDOM\Domain Admins /srv/samba/Printer_drivers/
# chmod -R 2755 /srv/samba/Printer_drivers/
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Sharing a printer with Samba

For each printer you want to share via Samba, you have to create a separate share (unless you have
"load printers = yes" defined in your smb.conf). The following is an example:
[MyDemoPrinter]
path = /var/spool/samba/
browseable = yes
printable = yes
printer name = Printername_in_backend

Set the printer name parameter to the name of your corresponding CUPS/LPD/... queue.
To bring the changes live, reload the Samba configuration:
# smbcontrol all reload-config

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This page was last modified on 22 September 2014, at 18:35.
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