TIPS & TRICKS: SAMBA Printing in OS X

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1404

Mostly this was for myself, but might be useful for others. There's been some hiccups in printing as Apple comes out with updates. In 10.5.1, the method for adding networked Windows printers changed from the method in 10.4.x. The 10.5.2 release broke that change and in 10.5.3, everything worked again. In a previous post, I also noted that in 10.5.4 printing from Firefox was no longer working.

The key to SAMBA printing on OS X is the addresses used. The link to the Apple support page above is helpful and, mostly, I wanted to keep track of this information:

smb://user:password@workgroup/server/sharename
smb://user:password@server/sharename
smb://workgroup/server/sharename
smb://server/sharename

I may post the other steps, some of which are listed in the support page above, at a later time.

RANTS: Firefox 3.x Printing to Windows Printers over AD in OS X.5

We have a printing system that uses PCounter to handle accounting for individual users. Our users use Active Directory credentials to authenticate through our server to the various printers. I'm working off OS X 10.5 and using Firefox 3.0.1.

Printing from OS X 10.5 through our system throws up a window that asks for Active Directory credentials for authentication. This should occur through any application. It worked fine in Firefox 2.x. Since Firefox 3 was installed, I no longer have that option, though printing from other apps still work fine. When the print job is sent to the local queue, the user shows System Administrator, not even the name of the user who's logged in. Something in Firefox is bypassing the need for credentials and Firefox is passing along some default information.

I've already verified this on 2 different machines now. I need to investigate further.

TIPS & TRICKS: OS X Leopard Eject Superdrive Icon

Recently, I found an new icon on my taskbar on my Macbook Pro running OS X 10.5. The icon looks like this:


My first thought was how do I get rid of it? Here's how:

- Hold the alt/option key down.
- Navigate the mouse up to the icon.
- Click/hold the icon and drag it off the bar.

My second thought was how to restore it? Here's how:

- Navigate to System\Library\CoreServices\Menu Extras
- Click/hold the Eject.menu file.
- Drag it up to the upper right-hand portion of the task bar (near the clock).
- Drop it between any of the existing icons (much like adding an icon to the dock).

I'm not quite clear how mine just appeared, but I realized that on certain machines (i.e. desktop Macs with Superdrives that have trays), it can be a useful feature.