the corner office

Another Google and posterity post... setting up a Windows 2000 machine to print through Linux, the Windows box's printer properties kept showing the error "Access denied, unable to connect" next to the newly-set up printer.

Courtesy of this page, I managed to get that fixed by adding the line use client driver = yes to the [printers] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf.

That caused the "Access denied" error message to go away, but still no luck printing. The samba log file was reporting the following error though:

[2004/12/29 12:52:03, 0] printing/print_cups.c:cups_job_submit(765)
Unable to print file to HP610C - client-error-document-format-not-supported

I got that solved thanks to this post. Basically, Windows clients will send data to the printer in "raw" format, which CUPS (the Linux printing system) should just pass on directly to the printer. The problem is, you have to tell CUPS to do that. In the /etc/cups/ directory, you have to tweak two files:

In mime.types, you have to uncomment (or add) the line application/octet-stream.

In mime.convs, you have to uncomment (or add) the line:

application/octet-stream        application/vnd.cups-raw        0       -

... and problem solved.