Add Printer Wizard Driver Installation
The printers initially listed in the Samba host's Printers folder accessed from a
client's Explorer will have no real printer driver assigned to them. By default this driver name is set
to a null string. This must be changed now. The local Add Printer Wizard (APW), run from
NT/2000/XP clients, will help us in this task.
Installation of a valid printer driver is not straightforward. You must attempt to view the printer properties
for the printer to which you want the driver assigned. Open Windows Explorer, open Network
Neighborhood, browse to the Samba host, open Samba's Printers folder, right-click
on the printer icon, and select Properties.... You are now trying to view printer and
driver properties for a queue that has this default NULL driver assigned. This will
result in the following error message: “ Device settings cannot be displayed. The driver for the
specified printer is not installed, only spooler properties will be displayed. Do you want to install the
driver now?”
Do not click on Yes! Instead, click on No
in the error dialog. Now you will be presented with the printer properties window. From here, the way to
assign a driver to a printer is open. You now have the choice of:
Select a driver from the pop-up list of installed drivers. Initially this list will be empty.
Click on New Driver to install a new printer driver (which will
start up the APW).
Once the APW is started, the procedure is exactly the same as the one you are familiar with in Windows (we
assume here that you are familiar with the printer driver installations procedure on Windows NT). Make sure
your connection is, in fact, set up as a user with printer admin
privileges (if in doubt, use smbstatus to check for this). If you wish to install
printer drivers for client operating systems other than Windows NT x86,
you will need to use the Sharing tab of the printer properties dialog.
Assuming you have connected with an administrative (or root) account (as named by the
printer admin parameter), you will also be able to modify
other printer properties such as ACLs and default device settings using this dialog. For the default
device settings, please consider the advice given further in Installing
Print Drivers Using rpcclient.
