14.5 Sharing Printers

You can export all of your printers to Windows clients with a special [printers] section in your smb.conf file. Here's how the section looks when you're using CUPS:

[printers]
  comment = Printers
  browseable = yes
  printing = CUPS
  path = cups
  printable = yes
  writable = no

To use the printing = CUPS parameter, your Samba installation must be configured and linked against the CUPS library.

As you learned in Chapter 12, there are several other printing systems in addition to CUPS. On Linux, you can set the printing parameter to BSD, LPRNG, PLP, or CUPS. Of these, CUPS is the easiest.

Note?

Depending on your configuration, you may also want to allow guest access to your printers with the guest ok = yes option because you may not want to give a Samba password or account to everyone who needs to access the printers.

14.5.1 Sharing a Single Printer

If you want to export a single printer, you can do so with a printer section that looks like this:

[printer_name]
  comment = My printer
  printer name = printer_name
  printing = CUPS
  path = cups
  browseable = yes
  printable = yes

You can specify a driver name for Windows clients with the printer driver parameter. For example, to tell a client that the printer is an HP LaserJet 4M, you can use the following in the printer section: