For a while I was not able to print from Windows XP via Samba with my Brother HL 2030 laser printer which is connected to one of my servers. I’m running debian Etch there and had upgraded some packages, including samba. The printer was listed in my SWAT samba status, but on windows I couldn’t find it.

In the end it seems that I was missing one statement in my smb.conf:

[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
create mask = 0700
guest ok = Yes
printable = Yes
read only = No


The odd thing is, that when I look at the documentation, setting printable = Yes should have been enough. At least, that’s how I read it. But I guess I’m wrong since the read only = No helps (although you can’t set this parameter for a printer share using SWAT).