Is it possible to print from XP Home?

GettinSadda · Post by **GettinSadda** » 29 Jan 2008, 18:10

Is it possible to print to a Bubba connected printer from a PC running XP Home? I cannot get it to appear, even by putting the XP PC into the Excito workgroup.

If not then it is not suitable for the purpose for which is was sold and it will be heading back tomorrow.

Ubi · Post by **Ubi** » 30 Jan 2008, 01:18

Yes, the only real difference between home and pro is the ability to use domains. Printing is identical. Please don't get all aggressive on a volunteer-driven forum just because you don't know how to install network printers. It does not motivate people to help you.

GettinSadda · Post by **GettinSadda** » 30 Jan 2008, 03:59

Hey, forgive me if I have stumbled into an independent volunteer forum!

I was under the impression that this was the official support site for a purchased product - I found it by following the "support" link from the company's website.

Thank you for your independent assessment of my technical abilities based on, what, 54 words posted on a support forum?

Post by **johannes** » 30 Jan 2008, 04:20

GettinSadda,

We can confirm that it works to print from winXP, both home and pro, on our test machines. Also, we haven't had complaints about this particular problem before, so we really should be able to help you here.

Can you please describe the problem in detail? What is it that doesn't appear?

Thanks,

Ubi · Post by **Ubi** » 30 Jan 2008, 05:37

GettinSadda wrote:Thank you for your independent assessment of my technical abilities based on, what, 54 words posted on a support forum?

Well that and your other posts mainly

GettinSadda wrote:I don't know how to read the syslog under Debian!

The bottom line is that I think staying polite is IMO a better way to get other people to help you. You know how forums work, you're a member on quite a few. Now you're all surprised that it is populated with unpaid users. Anyway I'll leave it at this so it won't slide into a flamewar. Mail me directly otherwise.

Ubi

GettinSadda · Post by **GettinSadda** » 30 Jan 2008, 05:52

Thanks Johannes.

I have done lots of experimenting in the last few hours or so, and am getting closer to understanding what is going on!

There seem to be some differences in the way that XP Home and XP Pro behave with regards to the shared printer on the Bubba. These may be related purely to XP, but they did not cause any problems when the printer was connected to a server that was running Windows 2000 Professional.

The crux of the issue at the moment seems to be this:

* On an XP Pro machine, with the printer set up as a network printer and no drives mapped to the Bubba - it prints fine.

* On an XP Home machine, with the printer set up as a network printer and no drives mapped to the Bubba - it will not print. In the Printers and Faxes page it shows as "Printer not found on the server, unable to connect"

* On an XP Home machine, with the printer set up as a network printer and a drive mapped to the Bubba - it prints fine.

** Also even with a drive mapped from the XP machine, the printer does not seem to work after a PC reboot until you have accessed the mapped drive and re-entered the username and password, unless these match the username and password for the current user of the XP machine. Other mappings seem to be able to remember different username/password combinations.

On top of this, some oddities that confuse the issue:

The Bubba is in a workgroup called "EXCITO" and this normally shows up on an XP machine, this never shows up on the XP Home machine unless that machine is also added to the "EXCITO" workgroup.

Neither XP machine seem capable of adding a network printer unless there is a drive map set up on the server (at the time the printer is added to the XP machine).

Post by **johannes** » 30 Jan 2008, 06:22

GettinSadda,

Ok, thanks. So, to sum up: If you access:

Code: Select all

\\bubba\home\

..from your XP home machine, and entering any users name and password, the printing works? But before this, it doesn't?

Thanks,
/Johannes

GettinSadda · Post by **GettinSadda** » 30 Jan 2008, 06:36

johannes wrote:Ok, thanks. So, to sum up: If you access:
Code: Select all
\\bubba\home\
..from your XP home machine, and entering any users name and password, the printing works? But before this, it doesn't?

Exactly - and the problem is that with machines being used by various family members of differing computer skills, I don't want them each to have to go through an extra (seemingly unnecessary) step just to print.

For some reason it works as intended from XP Pro, and it works if the printer is connected to a Windows server, but it does not work from XP Home to a Bubba-connected printer.

Post by **johannes** » 30 Jan 2008, 06:56

Hi again,

Well, it seems like there is some incompatibility between XP Home and Linux SMB when it comes to authentication. The SMB printer at Bubba is set to be fully open, requiring no authentication (log on) at all, but apparently your XP home doesn't buy that.

Have you upgraded your windows installation to the latest SP?

One work-around might be to add a startup-script on your windows machine logging on to Bubba.

That's all I can think of right now, please get back to me if the problem persists and I'll try to dig deeper into it.

Thanks,

GettinSadda · Post by **GettinSadda** » 30 Jan 2008, 08:03

Everything is up to date, so I have done what you suggested and added a script that maps a drive, with hard-coded password, on boot.

Not very secure, but at least all the PCs can now print!

Clive · Post by **Clive** » 30 Jan 2008, 09:18

Completely unconnected with Bubba, but I was recently working on a similar issue regarding accessing network and printers anonymously via a Windows share, it used to work OK with Windows Server 2003 and when we upgraded to WinXP anonymous access was rejected.

Turned out that for security issues Microsoft had changed the default anonymous access in WinXP. This was quickly reinstated by our technicians, not exactly sure what they did. But it did take a couple of days head scratching to figure out why the same Window shares were not accesible between the different OS's for certain users.

Sounds like you have a similar issue with XP home and XP Pro. XP home probably has much tighter security settings than PRO.

Ubi · Post by **Ubi** » 30 Jan 2008, 09:45

It's not so much that it is tighter, but different. SMB basically has two different security models, which authenticat either on share level or on user level. XPHome seems to like the first version (and behaves like Win98). Now a common problem is that the SMB server doesn't really get all the data it needs to accomplisch authentication and has to guess a few parameters (no really, check some of the ranting on the samba dev lists). This often gives problems.
The standard way around this is to mount the printer with a password

Code: Select all

NET USE LPT1: [password] \\servername\printername /persistent:yes

If you're worried about security, add a lowlevel username to bubba for which you can use the connection