Please help with Samba

[Fischer]

Please could you help me - I want to stay with PC BSD but cannot find answers to simple problems.

I love BSD for speed and wonderful simple graphics but have some newbie problems that make the system unfriendly to me tough I have used Linux (I know BSD is not Linux) for many years and can figue out things. I have been searching through forums and websites and cannot find solution to two simple problems:

1. When I am trying to set up my network printer through SMB (attached to a windows computer) the search for the printer (with firewall down) produces no results. I have been trying to fill in the box manually my workgroup is MSHOME1, the computer with the printer is called MALGOSIA and the printer is Drukarka3. No results. It is astonishing for me since this printer can be easily set up in SMB in Ubuntu and MAC. I can also see my wife's coputer sharefolder. So why not a printer?

2. It is getting on my nerves that I cannot open my Libre Office files through double click. I try to tell the computer to use LIbre Office - right click choose the proper application but cannot because Libre Office although installed and running is not listed there.

I will be gratful if you give me short hints what to try. I know you dont have time to show newbies around but please show me direction and reassure me those things can be done.

Many many thanks Marek

[Tiberius Duval]

On samba problem I cannot help, but can you define Libreoffice as default software for opening documents from KDE controll center, if it is not listed, you can always find libre-office binaries, if I remember correctly binaries of pbi packets installed are somewhere under/usr/pbi...

(Running linux now, so I cannot verify)

[Fischer]

Many thanks for the offer to help. My fault I forgot to add I am running Gnome on my PC BSD 9.0 and 64 bits (may be this is increases the risk of bugs?) So I am not sure about KDE solution. It is so strange simple things have not been thought of in this friendly Unix.
Many thanks
Fischer

[Tiberius Duval]

It has been some years when I last used Gnome, but as far as I know there should be something similar control panel in gnome, where you can adjust settings.

[Alvin]

There's no need to bring the firewall down. SMB and NFS are allowed by default. (So sayeth the Handbook, chapter 8.9.)

I don't know whether CUPS in PC-BSD actually supports samba. There might be another solution however. Configure your Windows print server to use LPD. (In order to do that, Configure Print Services for UNIX.)

I do find it weird that your printer has a hostname. That's usually only the case for network printers. If it's directly attached to the Windows host, the hostname to use would be the one from the Windows host.

[fluca1978]

You can try to manually add the printer via the command line, just to see if it is a GUI/Samba problem or something related to the network/other pc:

lpadmin -p MYPRINTER -E -v smb://guest@windowspc/printerQueueName -c REMOTEPRINTERS

and see if it works. Otherwise, from the command line, try to connect to the printer via:

smbclient //windowspc/printerQueueName

and see if you can get connected or there is same sharing problem.
Hope this helps.