[plug] Samba print spool and win2k terminal server

[Kai Jones]

Hi all,

This is a bit OT, since it involves a Windows server however it also 
involves Samba so I didn't think it was OT enough to post to the OT list.

I dunno if anyone knows much about this but I've tried googling and MS
Technetting, I didn't want to send email without doing as much
research as possible but nothing I've found has resolved this problem or
given us (m)any usefull ideas.

We have a Samba server running as Primary Domain Controller and we're
utilising Samba's print spool to run with Windows 2000 Terminal server,
all printers on our network are spooled through Samba and all our
finance team log in to the Terminal server to access our database
application, sporadically and without warning the Terminal server will
not be able to see any of the printers and no-one can print, if you're
physically at the terminal server this error will show- "The
procedure entry point GetPrinterA could not be located in dll
SPOOLSS.dll", other than that there is no information in any log file
that points to any of our printers as the cause of the problem, nor are
there any message on any of the users machines who're logged into the
Terminal server - printing just doesn't work and Samba print spool 
doesn't report any errors either.

This error comes from Windows 2000 logs -

Event Type:     Error
Event Source:   Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID:       7031
Date:           18/02/2003
Time:           8:12:29 AM
User:           N/A
Computer:       TRMN-SERV
Description:
The Print Spooler service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1
time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds:
No action.

So far we haven't figured out a way of bringing those printers back
without restarting the Terminal server (yes we've tried restarting the
printer spooler on the Terminal server but that doesn't have any
effect), normally that wouldn't be such a big deal but if we reboot 
everyone has to log-off the terminal server before we can restart 
otherwise whatever acounting work they're doing is lost and AFAIK their 
Terminal server session is locked for a while too.

We have tried the information here -
http://bizforums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1%2C%2C0x8eb0ba808b46d611abda
0090277a778c%2C00.html
- with no joy.

Terminal server details are:
Win2k SP3
Build 5.00.2195
on an HP E800 with dual 1GHz CPU's and 1.5 gigs of RAM.

Samba version is samba-2.0.6-9 on Red Hat Linux version 7.1 Kernel 2.4.2-2
on an HP LC2000 with 1GHz P3 with 1gig of RAM.

Also, something that may be related to this, once we reboot the terminal
server and open Network Neighbourhood, all machines on the network
display with no problems, however, after a undertimed amount of time
afterwards, Network Neighbourhood can take from a few seconds to two
minutes to display all machines on the network, and of course with the
average user; if something doesn't open within a few seconds of
double-clicking it, they try it again, and again, and again and...which
means there's more than one request for the same file from the same
application.

We have tried removing printer drivers for one of the printers which we
thought may be causing the problems, but that didn't do any good.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears !

Thanks

Kai