Connecting to samba printers

To connect to a samba printer you have to install the samba client first:

aptitude install smbclient

Next you just create a new printer (e.g. using the web frontend for samba - localhost:631). From the list of connection types select:

Windows Printer via SAMBA

If its not in the list then you are missing some packages. Enter the connection url in the format:

smb:///username:password@server/printer

The last thing to do on the following screen is to select appropriate driver.

Usually, especially in a big organization you want to use the short windows names to connect to resources. To make it work samba needs to be a WINS client. In the samba configuration file
(/etc/samba/smb.conf) uncomment and correct the line:

wins server = 155.198.63.69

The above example is the Imperial College wins server.