I hope that this is a bug and not something which I've misconfigured, but: 1) noone on the Samba list seems to recognise it, and 2) it works from XP but not Server 2008, which seems highly suspicious. I have a redhat EL5 samba server hosting a collection of printers and joined to a domain. I can connect to this server and print happily from a 32-bit XP box on the domain, but a 64-bit windows server 2008 box cannot connect, and returns the error: "Windows cannot connect to the printer: Operation could not be completed (error 0x000006d1)." I get the same results with samba 3.0.33 (came with redhat), 3.5.3 (the latest from sernet), and 3.3.12 (this message from the samba-technical archives - http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2010-February/069145.html - mentions that at least as of February there were issues with 3.4.x+ and 64-bit client OS'.) From the 2008 machine, I can browse the samba server in wexplorer and see the printers, but trying to set up a networked printer generates the error above. /var/log/samba/log.smb from the time around the failed connection (using 3.3.12 - the last version I tried) contains: [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 3] smbd/ipc.c:handle_trans(442) trans <\PIPE\> data=44 params=0 setup=2 [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 3] smbd/ipc.c:named_pipe(393) named pipe command on <> name [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 4] rpc_server/srv_pipe_hnd.c:get_rpc_pipe(1231) search for pipe pnum=71df [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 3] smbd/ipc.c:api_fd_reply(351) Got API command 0x26 on pipe "spoolss" (pnum 71df) [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 3] rpc_server/srv_pipe_hnd.c:free_pipe_context(500) free_pipe_context: destroying talloc pool of size 0 [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 4] rpc_server/srv_pipe.c:api_rpcTNP(2352) api_rpcTNP: spoolss op 0x1d - api_rpcTNP: rpc command: SPOOLSS_CLOSEPRINTER [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 4] rpc_server/srv_lsa_hnd.c:find_policy_by_hnd_internal(179) Policy not found: [000] 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E 4C 78 8D ........ .....Lx. [010] 28 24 00 00 ($.. [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 2] rpc_server/srv_spoolss_nt.c:find_printer_index_by_hnd(273) find_printer_index_by_hnd: Printer handle not found: Policy not found: [000] 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0E 4C 78 8D ........ \ .....Lx. [010] 28 24 00 00 ($.. [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 2] rpc_server/srv_spoolss_nt.c:find_printer_index_by_hnd(273) find_printer_index_by_hnd: Printer handle not found: close_printer_handle: Invalid handle (OURS:9256:9256) [2010/06/08 11:35:36, 4] rpc_server/srv_pipe.c:api_rpcTNP(2387) api_rpcTNP: bad handle fault return. (I'll add the full log in as an attachment.) I set up wireshark to do a packet trace of the connection attempt. I'm not familiar enough with what the traffic should look like to know whats unusual, but the one thing that jumped out at me towards the end of the conversation was a SPOOLSS OpenPrinterEx request on the network printer, followed by a response with the return code of 5 - Access denied. "Aha!" I say to myself, must be a permissions problem... but a packet trace of the successful connection from the XP box shows several similar Access denied messages. Maybe that means its irrelevant, but it seemed worth mentioning - I'll attach a packet trace as well.
Created attachment 5785 [details] log.smbd log.smbd from the time around a failed connection attempt
Created attachment 5786 [details] wireshark packet trace Wireshark pcap file for the time around a failed connection.
Created attachment 5787 [details] output from testparm output from testparm - my smb.conf without all the annoying comments
Now this is interesting... The Server 2008 machine I was using to test this was running Windows server 2008 _Terminal Server_. (Sorry, should have noticed and mentioned that earlier.) Tested it today running s Server 2008 x64 _without_ Terminal Server, and it prints fine. So it sounds like its actually the Terminal Server aspect thats causing the problem. Since I hadn't noticed this before, I'll do some more digging to see if this is a known problem that I had simply misidentified, and post the results here.
Ok, apparently Microsoft completely changed the way printing is done from Terminal Server between 2003 and 2008 - see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753853%28WS.10%29.aspx for details. We have found a workaround: 1) On the Windows Server 2008 TS host, bring up the Server Manager. 2) Under Features, install Group Policy Management if it isn't installed already. 3) Under Group Policy Management, drill down til you find the policy which is applying to your machine. 4) Right click the Group Policy Object and select "edit". 5) In the resulting editor window, drill down to Computer Configuration:Policies:Administrative Templates:Printers 6) Find the setting "Always render print jobs on the server" and disable it. 7) reboot the machine. So its definitely Windows' fault (surprise surprise). Whether this therefore counts as a bug in samba or not I will leave up to you folks to decide; I am satisfied with my workaround, so you can close this out if you like as far as I'm concerned.
printing is working as expected in recent samba versions also with modern windows clients