If your ThinLinc setup uses a Windows Terminal Server for some applications, access to printers for these applications is handled automatically by redirection over RDP. When rdesktop is started via tl-run-rdesktop as is the case when applications on Windows Terminal Servers are started via any of the ThinLinc wrapper commands, the list of printers available to the user on the Linux or Solaris server running the ThinLinc session is automatically fetched. Each printer is then added to the rdesktop commandline in a way that makes it appear in the users' session on the WTS.
One advantage of this feature is that the Section 5.5, “ Printer Access Control ” will be active even for programs running on Windows Terminal Servers, since only the printers the user are allowed to see and use are exported.
For some special cases, manually configuring printers on the Windows Terminal Server may be required. This is the case for example if some application require that the name of the printer is exactly the same across sessions, as printers added automatically have names that contain the WTS session id. For information on how to configure printers manually, see Appendix D, Configuring CUPS queues on Windows Terminal Servers
The same printer driver is used on the Windows Terminal Servers for all printers regardless of model. This limits the amount of settings a user can modify when printing. For example, selecting a different paper tray than the default one is not possible. If these limitations are a problem, defining printer queues manually as described above may be an option.
The automatic redirection of printers to Windows Terminal Servers is enabled by default, but can be disabled by setting /appservergroups/rdp/<appgroup>/redirect_printers to false.
If a user modifies the printer settings for a redirected printer on a Windows Terminal Server, the changes are written to a file named ~/.rdesktop/rdpdr/<printername>/AutoPrinterCacheData.
If changes to printer setttings should be made for all printers, login to the WTS, make the changes, then wait a few minutes, log out, then copy the generated ~/.rdesktop/rdpdr/<printername>/AutoPrinterCacheData to /opt/thinlinc/etc/rdpdr/<printername>. This must be done for all printers.
The settings file will now be copied to user home directories when tl-run-rdesktop is run. Existing files will not be overwritten, so if printer settings need to be changed, existing files in user home directories must be removed.