This section tells you how to use printers you have set up with FreeBSD. Here is an overview of the user-level commands:
There is also an administrative command, lpc(8), described in the section Administering Printers, used to control printers and their queues.
All three of the commands lpr(1), lprm(1), and
lpq(1) accept an option -P
to specify
on which printer/queue to operate, as listed in the
printer-name
/etc/printcap
file. This enables you to
submit, remove, and check on jobs for various printers. If you
do not use the -P
option, then these commands
use the printer specified in the PRINTER
environment variable. Finally, if you do not have a
PRINTER
environment variable, these commands
default to the printer named lp
.
Hereafter, the terminology default
printer means the printer named in the
PRINTER
environment variable, or the printer
named lp
when there is no
PRINTER
environment variable.
To print files, type:
%
lpr filename
...
This prints each of the listed files to the default printer. If you list no files, lpr(1) reads data to print from standard input. For example, this command prints some important system files:
%
lpr /etc/host.conf
/etc/hosts.equiv
To select a specific printer, type:
%
lpr -P
printer-name
filename
...
This example prints a long listing of the current
directory to the printer named
rattan
:
%
ls -l
| lpr -P
rattan
Because no files were listed for the lpr(1) command,
lpr
read the data to print from standard
input, which was the output of the ls
command.-l
The lpr(1) command can also accept a wide variety of options to control formatting, apply file conversions, generate multiple copies, and so forth. For more information, see the section Printing Options.
When you print with lpr(1), the data you wish to print is put together in a package called a “print job”, which is sent to the LPD spooling system. Each printer has a queue of jobs, and your job waits in that queue along with other jobs from yourself and from other users. The printer prints those jobs in a first-come, first-served order.
To display the queue for the default printer, type
lpq(1). For a specific printer, use the
-P
option. For example, the command
%
lpq -P
bamboo
shows the queue for the printer named
bamboo
. Here is an example of the output
of the lpq
command:
This shows three jobs in the queue for
bamboo
. The first job, submitted by user
kelly, got assigned “job number” 9. Every job
for a printer gets a unique job number. Most of the time you
can ignore the job number, but you will need it if you want to
cancel the job; see section Removing Jobs for
details.
Job number nine consists of two files; multiple files
given on the lpr(1) command line are treated as part of a
single job. It is the currently active job (note the word
active
under the “Rank”
column), which means the printer should be currently printing
that job. The second job consists of data passed as the
standard input to the lpr(1) command. The third job came
from user mary
; it is a much larger job.
The pathname of the file she is trying to print is too long to
fit, so the lpq(1) command just shows three dots.
The very first line of the output from lpq(1) is also useful: it tells what the printer is currently doing (or at least what LPD thinks the printer is doing).
The lpq(1) command also support a -l
option to generate a detailed long listing. Here is an
example of lpq
:-l
If you change your mind about printing a job, you can remove the job from the queue with the lprm(1) command. Often, you can even use lprm(1) to remove an active job, but some or all of the job might still get printed.
To remove a job from the default printer, first use lpq(1) to find the job number. Then type:
%
lprm job-number
To remove the job from a specific printer, add the
-P
option. The following command removes job
number 10 from the queue for the printer
bamboo
:
%
lprm -P
bamboo 10
The lprm(1) command has a few shortcuts:
Removes all jobs (for the default printer) belonging to you.
user
Removes all jobs (for the default printer) belonging
to user
. The superuser can
remove other users' jobs; you can remove only your own
jobs.
With no job number, user name, or -
appearing on the command line, lprm(1) removes the
currently active job on the default printer, if it
belongs to you. The superuser can remove any active
job.
Just use the -P
option with the above
shortcuts to operate on a specific printer instead of the
default. For example, the following command removes all jobs
for the current user in the queue for the printer named
rattan
:
%
lprm -P
rattan -
If you are working in a networked environment, lprm(1) will let you remove jobs only from the host from which the jobs were submitted, even if the same printer is available from other hosts. The following command sequence demonstrates this:
%
lpr -P
rattan myfile
%
rlogin orchid
%
lpq -P
rattan
Rank Owner Job Files Total Size
active seeyan 12 ... 49123 bytes
2nd kelly 13 myfile 12 bytes
%
lprm -P
rattan 13
rose: Permission denied
%
logout
%
lprm -P
rattan 13
dfA013rose dequeued
cfA013rose dequeuedThe lpr(1) command supports a number of options that control formatting text, converting graphic and other file formats, producing multiple copies, handling of the job, and more. This section describes the options.
The following lpr(1) options control formatting of the files in the job. Use these options if the job does not contain plain text or if you want plain text formatted through the pr(1) utility.
For example, the following command prints a DVI file
(from the TeX typesetting system) named
to the printer named fish-report.dvi
bamboo
:
%
lpr -P
bamboo -d fish-report.dvi
These options apply to every file in the job, so you cannot mix (say) DVI and ditroff files together in a job. Instead, submit the files as separate jobs, using a different conversion option for each job.
All of these options except -p
and
-T
require conversion filters installed
for the destination printer. For example, the
-d
option requires the DVI conversion
filter. Section Conversion
Filters gives details.
-c
Print cifplot files.
-d
Print DVI files.
-f
Print FORTRAN text files.
-g
Print plot data.
-i
number
Indent the output by
number
columns; if you omit
number
, indent by 8
columns. This option works only with certain
conversion filters.
Do not put any space between the
-i
and the number.
-l
Print literal text data, including control characters.
-n
Print ditroff (device independent troff) data.
Format plain text with pr(1) before printing. See pr(1) for more information.
-T
title
Use title
on the
pr(1) header instead of the file name. This
option has effect only when used with the
-p
option.
-t
Print troff data.
-v
Print raster data.
Here is an example: this command prints a nicely formatted version of the ls(1) manual page on the default printer:
%
zcat /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz
| troff -t
-man | lpr -t
The zcat(1) command uncompresses the source of the
ls(1) manual page and passes it to the troff(1)
command, which formats that source and makes GNU troff
output and passes it to lpr(1), which submits the job
to the LPD spooler. Because we
used the -t
option to lpr(1), the
spooler will convert the GNU troff output into a format the
default printer can understand when it prints the
job.
The following options to lpr(1) tell LPD to handle the job specially:
copies
Produce a number of
copies
of each file in the
job instead of just one copy. An administrator may
disable this option to reduce printer wear-and-tear
and encourage photocopier usage. See section Restricting
Multiple Copies.
This example prints three copies of
followed by three copies of
parser.c
to the default printer:parser.h
%
lpr -#3
parser.c parser.h
Send mail after completing the print job. With this option, the LPD system will send mail to your account when it finishes handling your job. In its message, it will tell you if the job completed successfully or if there was an error, and (often) what the error was.
Do not copy the files to the spooling directory, but make symbolic links to them instead.
If you are printing a large job, you probably want to use this option. It saves space in the spooling directory (your job might overflow the free space on the filesystem where the spooling directory resides). It saves time as well since LPD will not have to copy each and every byte of your job to the spooling directory.
There is a drawback, though: since LPD will refer to the original files directly, you cannot modify or remove them until they have been printed.
If you are printing to a remote printer,
LPD will eventually have
to copy files from the local host to the remote
host, so the -s
option will save
space only on the local spooling directory, not the
remote. It is still useful, though.
Remove the files in the job after copying them to
the spooling directory, or after printing them with
the -s
option. Be careful with this
option!
These options to lpr(1) adjust the text that normally appears on a job's header page. If header pages are suppressed for the destination printer, these options have no effect. See section Header Pages for information about setting up header pages.
text
Replace the hostname on the header page with
text
. The hostname is
normally the name of the host from which the job was
submitted.
text
Replace the job name on the header page with
text
. The job name is
normally the name of the first file of the job, or
stdin
if you are printing
standard input.
Do not print any header page.
At some sites, this option may have no effect due to the way header pages are generated. See Header Pages for details.
As an administrator for your printers, you have had to install, set up, and test them. Using the lpc(8) command, you can interact with your printers in yet more ways. With lpc(8), you can
Start and stop the printers
Enable and disable their queues
Rearrange the order of the jobs in each queue.
First, a note about terminology: if a printer is stopped, it will not print anything in its queue. Users can still submit jobs, which will wait in the queue until the printer is started or the queue is cleared.
If a queue is disabled, no user
(except root
) can submit jobs for the
printer. An enabled queue allows jobs to
be submitted. A printer can be started
for a disabled queue, in which case it will continue to print
jobs in the queue until the queue is empty.
In general, you have to have root
privileges to use the lpc(8) command. Ordinary users can
use the lpc(8) command to get printer status and to
restart a hung printer only.
Here is a summary of the lpc(8) commands. Most of
the commands take a printer-name
argument to tell on which printer to operate. You can use
all
for the
printer-name
to mean all printers
listed in /etc/printcap
.
abort
printer-name
Cancel the current job and stop the printer. Users can still submit jobs if the queue is enabled.
clean
printer-name
Remove old files from the printer's spooling directory. Occasionally, the files that make up a job are not properly removed by LPD, particularly if there have been errors during printing or a lot of administrative activity. This command finds files that do not belong in the spooling directory and removes them.
disable
printer-name
Disable queuing of new jobs. If the printer is
running, it will continue to print any jobs remaining in
the queue. The superuser (root
)
can always submit jobs, even to a disabled queue.
This command is useful while you are testing a new
printer or filter installation: disable the queue and
submit jobs as root
. Other users
will not be able to submit jobs until you complete your
testing and re-enable the queue with the
enable
command.
down printer-name
message
Take a printer down. Equivalent to
disable
followed by
stop
. The
message
appears as the
printer's status whenever a user checks the printer's
queue with lpq(1) or status with lpc
status
.
enable
printer-name
Enable the queue for a printer. Users can submit jobs but the printer will not print anything until it is started.
help
command-name
Print help on the command
command-name
. With no
command-name
, print a summary
of the commands available.
restart
printer-name
Start the printer. Ordinary users can use this
command if some extraordinary circumstance hangs
LPD, but they cannot start
a printer stopped with either the
stop
or
down
commands. The
restart
command is equivalent to
abort
followed by
start
.
start
printer-name
Start the printer. The printer will print jobs in its queue.
stop
printer-name
Stop the printer. The printer will finish the current job and will not print anything else in its queue. Even though the printer is stopped, users can still submit jobs to an enabled queue.
topq printer-name
job-or-username
Rearrange the queue for
printer-name
by placing the
jobs with the listed job
numbers or the jobs belonging to
username
at the top of
the queue. For this command, you cannot use
all
as the
printer-name
.
up
printer-name
Bring a printer up; the opposite of the
down
command. Equivalent to
start
followed by
enable
.
lpc(8) accepts the above commands on the command
line. If you do not enter any commands, lpc(8) enters an
interactive mode, where you can enter commands until you type
exit
, quit
, or
end-of-file.
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