Sharing printers between Unix and NT.

A. A. I have enclosed instructions for printing to Unix servers (almost the same as for network printers), and also how the NT machine can be used as a gateway for 2 way printing between windows (all versions) and Unix. The Unix use is AIX, although the others should be similar.

Setting up NT for TCP/IP printing

Login as a member of the Administrators Group

Start Control Panel

Double Click Network, and select the Services tab

Click Add, and select "Microsoft TCP/IP printing"

Click OK and then Close

Click "No" to delay reboot

TCP/IP Print server service must be set to start automatically (Start - Settings - Control Panel - Services - TCP/IP Print Server - Startup - Automatic)

Reboot the system

Adding a remote print queue

Double Click "My Computer"

Double click Printers, and select Add Printer

Select "Printer is a local printer", and then continue

Click Add Port, and select "LPR port"

Click New Port and fill in the IP address of the printer (or name from local hosts table) in the top box, enter the remote queue name in the bottom box

Click Next and then select the printer driver

Click Next and select if you want to share it, and then click Finish

To authorize prints from this NT machine, as root edit "/etc/hosts.lpd"

Add the NT machine's IP address (or name if it has an entry in the Unix machine's hosts table)

Sharing NT printers with unix machines

It is necessary to add a registry key as for UNIX to successfully pass data to an NT server the data type must be set to RAW.

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
2. Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LPDSVC\Parameters
3. From the Edit menu select New - DWORD value
4. Enter a name of SimulatePassThrough and press Enter
5. Double click the new value and set to 1. Click OK

The default value for SimulatePassThrough is 0, which informs LPD to assign data types according to the control commands.

6. Close the registry editor
7. Start – Settings – Printers
8. Right click on printer to be shared
9. Select properties
10. Select shared tab
11. Select shared
12. Enter share name (this is what the unix machine will see it as)
13. Select Security tab
14. Select Permissions
15. Ensure unix users have permissions to print, either by "everyone" or "network" having permission (Print is all that is required)
16. Click OK

Create a queue on the unix machine as normal, for a text only print queue on aix use:

17. run "smit mkpq"
18. Select "remote"
19. Select "local filtering before sending to print server"
20. In the names section, type <desired queue name> against ASCII
21. Set hostname to be hostname of the NT machine
22. Set queue to be share name of queue on NT machine
23. Set type of print spooler to be "BSD"
24. Press enter to confirm

Using an NT machine as a Windows - Unix print gateway

Add any unix printers you wish to share to NT machine as shown above.

Share them out as if they were normal print queues.

Add them to all the clients you wish to print to them from

Share out any clients you wish to print from on the unix machine(s) as normal

Add these shared windows printers to the NT machine as normal.

Share them out to the unix machine(s) as shown above

Thanks to Chris Griffiths for this

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