Printing from your laptop

To print from your laptop, you must be connected to the internet inside Van Vleck. You can use either the DoIT wireless network or you can use the spare ethernet cables in rooms 101 and 322. You cannot print to the Math department printers from outside Van Vleck.

Note: Readers of this article may also be interested in instructions on Accessing your Math department network space.

1. # Configuring a printer with Windows XP
2. # Printing via samba in linux
3. # Configuring a samba printer in MacOs

Configuring a printer with Windows XP

Before you begin, make sure you have the driver for your selected printer installed on your laptop. If you intend to print to a HP 4300 printer, your Windows laptop will probably already have the drivers installed. However, if you intend to print to a Ricoh color printer, you will have to install drivers. Drivers for the Ricoh color printers can be found on the Ricoh support web site.

To configure your Windows laptop to print to a Math department printer, first connect your laptop to the DoIT wireless within Van Vleck or use the spare ethernet cables in rooms 101 or 322. Once you are connected, click Start -> Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes. When the Printers and Faxes control opens, click the Add Printer button. When the wizard asks if you are configuring a local printer or a network printer, click the button for 'A network printer or a printer connected to another computer'. When the wizard asks for the printer name, enter \\printserver1\N where N is the number of your favorite printer. For instance, if you are on the 6th floor of Van Vleck, you would probably want to print to printer 6. You would therefore enter //printserver1/6 as the name of the printer you are connecting to. When the wizard asks for your user name and password, enter your Math department user name and password.

Printing via samba in linux

To print from your linux laptop via samba, you must be connected to the internet in Van Vleck. You can use the DoIT wireless or you can use the spare ethernet cables in rooms 101 or 322. To print via samba, you will first need to install the smbclient program on your laptop. In ubuntu or debian linux, this can be done by opening a terminal window and typing, "apt-get install smbclient". Once you have installed smbclient, you can print to a Math department printer using the smbclient command. To do this, open a terminal window and type something like, smbclient //printserver1/N -U yourusername -c 'put yourdocument.ps' Replace the N in the command above with the number of your favorite printer. For example, if your office is on the 6th floor, you would probably want to use printer 6 so you would type //printserver1/6. Replace 'yourusername' with your Math department user name and replace 'yourdocument.ps' with the name of the document you wish to print.

Configuring a samba printer in MacOs

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2. Choose Print & Fax from the View menu.
3. Click the + button to add a printer.
4. Press the Control key while clicking the "Default" icon (or any other icon on the toolbar), then choose Customize Toolbar from the contextual menu that appears. Drag the Advanced (gear) icon to the toolbar. Click Done.
5. Click the Advanced icon that was added to the toolbar.
6. Choose Windows from the Type pop-up menu.
7. In the URL field, type smb://printserver1/N where N is the number of your favorite printer.
8. In the Name field, type the name you would like to use for this printer in Mac OS X.
9. Choose the HP4300 printer driver from the "Print Using" pop-up menu.
10. Click Add.