Risc OS Samba printing

Short version: I can’t get RISC OS 5 to print to a Samba shared printer on the network.

Longer version: I’ve recently bought a second Raspberry Pi with the idea of using it running Raspbian as a shared file and print server for my various RISC OS and Windows machines. No real problems installing Samba (OmniClient on my RISC OS 5.27 pi can read and write files to it), and the shared printer works happily from Windows and various iOS devices. BUT… RISC OS gives me the error message “Printing paused: Share name does not exist”.

I’ve been trying to follow the instructions on p182 of the RISC OS 5 user guide, and think the problem might be in the filename I’ve entered, which I currently have as:

OmniPrint#LanMan;RASPBERRYPI;HP_LaserJet_1200:

“RASPBERRYPI” is – I think – the name of the server – at least, that’s what OmniClient labels it as.

“HP_LaserJet_1200” seems to be the printer’s name for Raspbian applications, although iOS gives it the same name with spaces rather than underscores.

Any suggestions (other than going back to lots of USB cables!)? Thanks in advance…

HP_LaserJet_1200

Shorten that in the SAMBA share end and then use the new name in your OmniPrint config.

I would suggest “HPLJ1200” as the shortest descriptive name, but pick anything 8 characters or fewer and avoid unusual characters like underscore or dash i.e. stick to A-Z and 0-9
Whatever you do don’t use a space in the share name, those are a nightmare on cross-platform comms.

OK – I’ve tried that; printer now renamed HPLJ1200 and showing as such in iOS.

File in Connections window is now:

OmniPrint#LanMan;RASPBERRYPI;HPLJ1200:

… but still causes the same error message as before.

OK, so it wasn’t the old chestnut of DOS style names.

The next thing anyone reading this will want to know concerns the Raspbian end: What version of SAMBA and what are the permissions for guest access?

OK, Just tried using the format mentioned with a printer off a Windows 10 machine.

So I started OmniClient and logged in to the Windows machines share.

I set up a new printer in RISC OS and set the connection to:

On the Windows machine I then went in to the Printers properties and set it to “Share this printer” and gave it the name in the above connection string.

I started Edit and typed a bit of text and then printed it and out it poped.

So the string works, though to a Windows machine, and Omni does it via LanMan Samba v1.

So as Steve says is it due to the Samba version or permissions with Raspian

Samba version: 4.9.5-Debian

I think the relevant bits of smb.conf for guest permissions would be:

[pihome]
comment= Pi Home
path=/home/pi
browseable=Yes
writeable=Yes
only guest=no
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no

and

[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
create mask = 0700

- does this tell you what permissions I have for guest access?

[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = yes
read only = yes
create mask = 0700

Not a SAMBA expert but I think the “browseable = no” shoud either be commented out (; browseable = no) or set to yes

“create mask = 0700” is setting the mask for object creation (incoming print files) to be owner only see table below.

does this tell you what permissions I have for guest access?

Symbolic notation	Numeric notation	English
----------	0000	no permissions
-rwx------	0700	read, write, & execute only for owner
-rwxrwx---	0770	read, write, & execute for owner and group
-rwxrwxrwx	0777	read, write, & execute for owner, group and others

You have the read/write permissions restricted to the “owner” which would be the user and password combo that you logged on to the Linux instance with try changing those to 0777

All that said, I think you may have to create a user in Raspbian that your RO machine uses to access the printer.

[printers]   
  browseable = yes   
  printable = yes   
  public = yes   
  create mode = 0700   
  guest only = yes   
  use client driver = yes
  guest account = smbprint   
  path = /home/smbprint

Thanks – I’ll give this a try. My intitial attempt managed to stop the OmniClient from even seeing RASPBERRYPI as a server…

So – I’ve commented out the [printers] section of smb.conf and inserted the suggested lines instead. Restarted everything, even re-installed the printer in CUPS with both the name and description changed to HPLJ1200. (Interestingly, some Linux applications are still seeing it as HP_LaserJet_1200).

I still get the same error message!

Finally got it working… sort of! Problem was on the Linux side of things – not sure how I cured it, but basically went back to a fresh install of Raspbian and started again. Unfortunately the CUPS driver seems so slow that RISC OS times out if it’s more than a few characters of plain text, so I’ve dug out an old Windows 7 netbook to use as a printer server. Interestingly, when sharing from Windows, the only name the RISC OS driver would respond to was “HPLJ1200” – which showed up nowhere on the Windows side of things, and I’d only used that name for the aborted Linux setup.