SMB Printing in Mac OSX
Most Mac users simply access network printers using LPR, but occasionally, you will need to interact with networks that are unfriendly to this method and find yourself having to use SMB printing. It’s a little inconvenient, but overall pretty easy to configure. I found some great instructions here. The method varies depending on which version of the operating system you have, but this site has directions for OS 10.2, 12.3, and 10.4, so it pretty much covers all the bases.
IFCONFIG Does Not give You Link Status; ETHTOOL Does
For some reason that is a complete mystery to me, RHEL does not give you the link status when you run
# ifconfig -a. This makes it incredibly hard to debug link integrity issues! Buried amongst all of Red Hat’s proprietary commands, however, is a utility called ethtool, which does give you the status of your link.
Since ethtool is used for querying settings of an ethernet device and changing them, it does a lot more than just give link status. Amongst other things, you can use it to turn on or off autonegotiation on your network card. Run # /sbin/ethtool -h for full usage.
Here’s how you use it to see if your server has link:
# /sbin/ethtool eth0
You should see something like this:
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: d
Link detected: yes
