Windows NT/2000 print servers associate a port with each printer. These normally take the form of LPT1:, COM1:, FILE:, and so on. Samba must also support the concept of ports associated with a printer. By default, only one printer port, named “Samba Printer Port”, exists on a system. Samba does not really need such a “port” in order to print; rather it is a requirement of Windows clients. They insist on being told about an available port when they request this information; otherwise, they throw an error message at you. So Samba fakes the port information to keep the Windows clients happy.

Samba does not support the concept of Printer Pooling internally either. Printer pooling assigns a logical printer to multiple ports as a form of load balancing or failover.

If you require multiple ports to be defined for some reason or another (my users and my boss should not know that they are working with Samba), configure the enumports command, which can be used to define an external program that generates a listing of ports on a system.