[Gloucs] SAMBA printing funnies (but I'm not laughing)

[Glyn Davies]

OK.

Got an old RedHat 7.3 server with about a dozen Windows clients (mix of 
XP and ME) hanging off it. The server provides. file shares, printers, 
email and authentication.

All has been fairly peachy for a few years but recently I have been 
getting complaints that the users can't print. In truth it appears that 
maybe 1 in 5 prints make it through or that things completely lock up 
for a while.

No CUPS involved. As far as I can tell, its SAMBA talking to lpd via 
/etc/printcap. Sorry to be a bit vague here but the printers were set up 
as unix printers with the redhat-printers-config gui and in SAMBA using 
SWAT (SAMBA Web Administration Tool) <Hangs head in shame> so I'm a 
little cloudy on what is happening. I've never been a fan of unix 
printing away even when I've hacked at the command line - too much of 
the black arts for my liking.

Anyway, can anyone suggest a way of starting to track down this problem? 
I've found diddly squat in /var/log and /var/log/samba. I guess adding 
some debug logging would be a good start. Also, any cool lp type 
commands so show what is going on.

SAMBA version is 2.2.7-3.7.3

As an aside, the printers display permission denied (or some such) when 
you open the printers folder in windows. I think it's always done that 
and hasn't been a problem but if you know different or why I'd like to know.

Yours hoping......

-- 
Best Regards
Glyn Davies