Post explains problem and solution how to add shared windows printer to the Fedora Core 17 Linux. The whole point was in missing samba-client rpm. Solution is simple but it was not so obvious from error log or displayed message in popup. Anyway, here are my case details. New Samsung ML-2160 laser printer was attached to the Windows host and it was needed to enable printing from Linux. First I started system-config-printer as root user:
> system-config-printer
Printer config initially didn’t show “Windows Printer” option so I clicked on “Find Network Printer” and entered IP address of windows host (192.168.1.12). After a minute, Fedora has found shared printer on network and displayed smb URI (SamsungML is the name of shared printer):
smb//192.168.1.12/SamsungML
At the last step when config is tried to save the following error was displayed in popup: There was an error during the CUPS operation: ‘client-error-not-possible’. Error was also logged in the /var/log/cups/error_log file:
E [02/Nov/2012:12:16:29 +0100] Returning IPP client-error-not-possible for CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer (ipp://localhost/printers/Samsung-ML-2160) from localhost E [02/Nov/2012:12:17:15 +0100] Returning IPP client-error-not-possible for CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer (ipp://localhost/printers/Samsung-ML-2160) from localhost E [02/Nov/2012:12:17:33 +0100] Returning IPP client-error-not-possible for CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer (ipp://localhost/printers/Samsung-ML-2160) from localhost
Every time when save button was clicked, cupsd logged the same error. After spending few hours I have listed installed samba packages and figured that samba-client package is missing. Here is how to install samba-client package:
> yum install samba-client
and then restart cups:
> systemctl restart cups.service
After starting system-config-printer utility, Windows Printer via SAMBA appeared in “Network Printer”. This time, adding shared windows printer was finished smoothly. Printer config was saved without a problem and windows printer happily accepts print jobs from my Linux PC.