Setting up and managing publishing printers in the Windows 2003 Active Directory

When you create a printer in Windows 2000/2003, the printer and Active Directory are configured to be holistic by default, and the printer is automatically published on the Active Directory. For printers that are not running Windows 2000/2003 computers (such as Windows NT 4.0), they cannot be automatically published in AD, either by using the Active Directory Management tool or by using the Pubprn.vbs scripts provided in the System32 folder in the Active Directory For manual Publishing.

4.4.1 Publishing of printers in Windows 2000/2003 domains

When you install a printer on a member server in the win2000/2003 domain and share it, it is automatically published in the Active Directory of the domain controller.

Features of printer publishing in Windows 2000/2003 domains

Publishing a printer means publishing a print queue, and an object in the Active Directory is a print queue. Managers only manage printers by changing the default attributes.

The following are the features of printer publishing in the win2000/2003 domain:

1, automatic release. Any printer that is shared on a print server running Windows 2000/2003 has an account in the Active Directory. When you need to publish a printer in AD, the administrator simply installs and shares the printer.

2. Each print server is responsible for publishing printers in the respective Active Directory. When you share a printer, the server that is responsible for sharing the printer issues a request to publish the printer on the Active Directory by the Federated domain controller.

3, the property is automatically updated. When you configure or modify printer properties, the properties of the printers that are published in the Active Directory are automatically updated.

4, automatic deletion. If the printer is removed from the Web or is not shared, the publication is automatically revoked from the Active Directory. This prevents users from connecting to printers that no longer exist on the network.

View printers published in a Windows 2000/2003 domain

You can view the printers that are published in the Active Directory by following these steps:

1. Open the Active Directory user and Computer Management console, and then on the View menu, click Users, groups, and computers as containers.

2. Select the computer in the console tree where the printer is installed, and the published printer will appear in the details panel. As shown in Figure 4-11.

Figure 4-11 shared printers published in AD