Samba allows client machines to share printers connected to the Samba server, as well as send Linux documents to Windows printer shares. Although there are other printing systems that function with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CUPS (Common UNIX Print System) is the recommended printing system due to its close integration with Samba.
The following example shows a very basic smb.conf configuration for CUPS support:
[global] load printers = Yes printing = cups printcap name = cups [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba/print printer = IBMInfoP browseable = No public = Yes guest ok = Yes writable = No printable = Yes printer admin = @ntadmins [print$] comment = Printer Drivers Share path = /var/lib/samba/drivers write list = ed, john printer admin = ed, john |
More complicated printing configurations are possible. To add additional security and privacy for printing confidential documents, users can have their own print spooler not located in a public path. If a job fails, other users would not have access to the file.
The print$ share contains printer drivers for clients to access if not available locally. The print$ share is optional and may not be required depending on the organization.
Setting browseable to Yes enables the printer to be viewed in the Windows Network Neighborhood, provided the Samba server is set up correctly in the domain/workgroup.