7.1.7 Automatically Setting Up Printer Drivers

The previous section described how to manually configure a printer driver for your Windows system. As a system administrator, however, you can't always guarantee that users can perform such a process without making mistakes. Luckily, however, you can ask Samba to automatically set up the printer drivers for a specific printer.

Samba has three options that can be used to automatically set up printer drivers for clients who are connecting for the first time. These options are printer driver, printer driver file, and printer driver location. This section explains how to use these options to allow users to skip over the Manufacturer dialog in the Add Printer Wizard above.

For more information on how to do this, see the PRINTER_DRIVER.TXT file in the Samba distribution documentation.

There are four major steps:

1. Install the drivers for the printer on a Windows client (the printer need not be attached).

2. Create a printer definition file from the information on a Windows machine.

3. Create a PRINTER$ share where the resulting driver files can be placed.

4. Modify the Samba configuration file accordingly.

Let's go over each of the four steps in greater detail.