Linux in a Windows World

Printing with CUPS

Although file shares are an important feature of many Samba servers, printer shares are also important. Before you can configure a Samba printer share, though, you must have a working local printer configuration. Most Linux distributions now use the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS; http://www.cups.org) as the local printing software. Therefore, before moving on to describing Samba printer share configuration, I present some basic information on CUPS configuration.

Installing CUPS

Because CUPS is a standard part of most Linux distributions, it may be installed on your system already. Use your package tools to look for a package called cups. If it’s not installed, your computer either has no printing system installed or it uses an older printing system, such as LPRng or BSD LPD.

If your system uses an older printing system, you can either uninstall it and install CUPS in its place or forgo CUPS and use the older system instead. Samba configuration is similar in either case, and if local printing is working to your satisfaction, leaving your current printing system in place is likely to be the less troublesome solution, so you may want to skip ahead to Section 4.3. If you want to switch to CUPS, you should uninstall your existing printing software, if it’s installed. In an RPM-based distribution, the -e parameter to rpm can uninstall the software: rpm -e lprng uninstalls the lprng package, if that’s what your system uses. In Debian or its derivatives, the -r ...