Hi: I've configured a rh7.3 linux machine as a samba server in order to share a HP printer with a win98 machine. No problem when trying to print from linux (pretty fast), but form win98 it takes more than 2 minutes to start printing. (I have a 60 machines network). Any idea?? Thank you Pere.

2 minutes is'nt bad considering the printer is shared with 60 other machines. The job has to run through the pcs redirector across the network cable to the host machine, spooled, put in the print que then printed. And of course printing directly from linux it will be spolled, qued and the printed-no nics, cable, switches or hubs to go through.

The reason it seems slow, is that in order for the windows machine to print to your linux box, it has to spool the file. The windows hosts have to completely create the spool file and then transfer that file to your shared printer. In fact what it happening is that a printer share on linux is nothing more than a shared directory where a spool file is sent. Once the entire file is sent, linux rips the file and prints it. The lag time you are expiriencing is the complete time it takes for you windows box to spool the entire file. Normally when a machine goes to print (to a local printer) it will print while it is spooling the file in the background. That's why it seems like it is printing really fast. Just for kicks, take a look in your temp directory where the spooled files are sent and print something from the windows machine. You will see that it takes forever for the windows mahinge to finally send the spooled file. But you will see that once it is there, it prints fast. Check your samba settings to find the location of your spooled tmp directory. I hope this helped!

Try configuring the linux box using the Raw Print Queue instead of the HP Driver. Meaning the Client PC configures the print out and the Server just forwards the job to the printer. With out getting involved with every job