If you have a lot of network printers in your environment it might be a good idea to set up a printserver with Samba4. Together with CUPS you are able to manage your printers for all your clients. For a Linux or MAC client you would only need CUPS, but as soon as you have Windows clients, CUPS is not enough, you need printer driver for all your printers to be installed on the clients.
If you are using Active Directory to manage all your users, groups and clients you can set up the printserver to share all printers to your Windows clients via GPOs. Not only connecting the printers via GPO but also installing the printer drivers for the printers on your Windows clients.
In this year's tutorial we will set up a printserver as part of an Active Directory and mange GPOs to connect the printers to the clients and install the drivers without user interaction.
What will we do?
1. Configure CUPS to share the printers inside your network.
2. Join the printserver into a Samba4 domain.
3. Set up the shares for spooling and printer drivers.
4. Install printer drivers.
5. Connect the printer with a driver.
6. Create a GPO to connect the printer to a client and install the driver
without user interaction.
7. Handle unsigned drivers.
Because sambaXP will be an online event the tutorial will also be held online.
What do you need to join the tutorial?
- PC with VirtualBox 6.x and Vagrant installed.
- Webcam and a eadset or speaker and microphone to ask questions.
- To test the printserver you need a Windows-System that can be joined into the test domain. If you don't have a Windows-VM you can download an evaluation Version from Microsoft https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/ Download the VirtualBox version and import the VM to VirtualBox. It's a full featured version valid for 40 days.
Training material:
You will get a handout including all steps to be able to recap independently
after the tutorial. For setting up the systems you will get a Vagrant file to
install the Samba4 domain controller and the printserver.