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!== Imprints.txt for Samba release 2.2.0-alpha3 24 Mar 2001
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Imprints (Installation Manager of Printer driver 
Retreival and Installation for Samba) is a project to 
implement a UNIX equivalent of the Windows NT APW.    
It has been taken on in part by the Samba Team, VA Linux 
Systems and Hewlett-Packard.   The Imprints toolset seeks 
to provide central repository for users and administrators 
to locate, download, and install all variations Window 
95/98/NT printer drivers on Samba print servers.  

The server portion of Imprints is composed of a database 
server which contains information and locations of various 
printer driver packages.  This server can be queried over 
standard HTTP get requests and should therefore be available 
to most administrators behind firewalls.  The server's 
database consists of records containing data  about each 
known printer driver package.  For example, each driver 
record contains a URL from which the Imprints installation 
client can download the package as well as a public key which 
can be used to verify the package's integrity.

Once downloaded, the installation client will attempt to 
install the printer driver on the defined remote server 
using the username and password provided by the administrator.  
If the username/password pair can be authenticated by the 
remote server (and has the appropriate authorization), then 
the printer driver(s) is (are) installed and the new Printer 
is created. 

From Samba's point of view, the process of creating a new 
printer via the Imprints installation client is identical to 
that of using the Windows NT APW.  In fact, Imprints utilizes 
Samba's rpcclient and smbclient tools to issue the same MS-RPC 
and file copy operations as an NT client.  This means that 
Imprints can also be used to install printers on remote Windows 
NT print servers.

For more information on Imprints, visit the project homepage 
at 

        http://imprints.sourceforge.net/.




