Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition

Sharing Printers with Windows Systems

In this section, we’ll consider printing to and from Windows systems.

Printing to a Windows Printer from a Unix System

Like most System V-based Unix operating systems, Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems provide an LPD service to handle incoming remote print jobs from non-Windows systems. The queues on the client Unix systems can be set up as normal for outgoing printing to a remote LPD server (as discussed earlier in this chapter). On the Windows server, you will need to do the following:

• Install the LPD printing support software, if necessary. This is part of the Windows TCP/IP implementation, but it is not selected by default at initial operating system installation. Under Windows NT 4, you can do this via the Services tab of the Network Properties dialog.

  Under Windows 2000, start the Add/Remove Programs control panel applet, click Add/Remove Windows Components, and then select Other Network File and Print Services. Click the Details button, and then choose Print Services for Unix.

• Start the LPD service. Under Windows NT 4, execute the net start lpdsvc command to start the incoming print job server. You may want to add this command to the AutoExNT.Bat file if you have installed that facility.

  Under Windows 2000, navigate to the Services and Applications → Services object in the Computer Management application. Then select the TCP/IP Print Server entry and change the start up method to Automatic (as illustrated in Figure 13-7).

Figure 13-7. Modifying ...