Windows Server 2003 printing without Samba to CUPS

[John A. Murdie]

Does anyone have experience with setting up printing services on a Windows Server 2003 so that its (Windows desktop) clients can print through it to the printers of a CUPS print server (hosted by a Solaris system), without going through Samba? (Occam's Razor - Don't multiply entities beyond necessity!) Awkwardly, I know nothing about Windows Server 2003 and the Windows people here know and wish to continue to know nothing about CUPS, but say that Windows Server 2003 does not let them address the many printers of a CUPS server with URIs such as ipp:cups/pp23, ipp:cups/pp24 etc, though they can configure one IPP printer at a particular address with a URI such as ipp:pp23. Is there an overview article on this subject?

There's nothing in these CUPS forums, and none of the 16 hits (it says 34 hits initially!) from Google for '+cups +"windows server 2003" +"without samba"' help.

We have other Windows desktop clients here which print directly to a CUPS server, and this works ok apart from the matter reported in STR #2087 "Windows queue entries for a CUPS server remain after job is printed" - http://www.cups.org/str.php?L2087 - which Mike (Sweet) thinks might be a Windows bug or 'feature'.

John A. Murdie