Printing

There are a great many printers dispersed throughout the department. Access rights for a particular printer is tied to login privileges on particular hosts. That is, if the host you're logged into has a queue for the printer, you may print to it. If it doesn't, but you need access to a particular printer, you should contact root for help. The examples in this tutorial will use the printer laser1 located in the Wilkinson Cluster lab, but they apply to all ECEnet printers.

UNIX printers typically only understand plain text or PostScript (PS). By the use of filters that convert from other printer languages to PS, they can be made to print other kinds of files. The following command will print the PS file myfile.ps to the default printer.

lp myfile.ps

Specifying a Printer

If there are multiple printers available to the host you're logged into, you can use the -d flag to choose the queue your file should be printed through. For example, to print myfile.ps to the laser printer queue named laser1, type

lp -dlaser1 myfile.ps

Checking the Queue

To check the status of your job and see what jobs are scheduled ahead of yours in the printer queue, type

lpq -Pqueue

where queue is the name of the printer queue to check. If we continue with our example of using laser1, then the output will look something like this:

laser1 is ready and printing
Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)                         Total Size
active  pred    209     /homes/pred/myfile.ps         38667 bytes

Cancelling a Job

First use the above command to find the job number. You may then remove that job from the queue by using lprm:

lprm -Plaser1 209

You can delete all of your currently-queued jobs by using a hyphen for the job number:

lprm -Plaser1 -

If a job is currently printing when you remove it, it may take several pages before the printer actually stops printing the job. In some cases, the job finishes printing anyway because it's already been read into the printer's memory.

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