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PDF Service with Samba LG #72

PDF Service with Samba
By John Bright

Introduction
PDF documents provide a great way to pass around documents on the Internet. They have many uses, such as sending quotes and invoices to business clients. Two of the main reasons the PDF format is so popular is that it preserves all of the document's formatting exactly and it is easily viewable on almost all platforms. For many computer users stuck in the Windows paradigm, creating PDF documents means forking over precious cash to the folks at Adobe. However, this article will show you how to use Linux, Samba, and Ghostscript to provide a PDF creation service to both Windows and Linux users. Of course, all of this can be obtained for free.

First, let's take a look at the overall scheme of operation. We will use Samba to provide a "pseudo-printer" service (it will look like a standard printer to clients) that will use Ghostscript to create a PDF document out of any Postscript printer job that is queued onto it. We will then configure the Windows machines to use this shared printer and send jobs to it in Postscript form.