Unix for Advanced Users - Manipulating Files

6. Manipulating Files

6.8. Printing

There are two print systems currently in use under Unix, namely BSD style printing and SVR4 style printing. Except Linux (which uses BSD system), most commercial Unix vendors today (i.e. HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris) use SVR4 printing (some provide the BSD print commands as a front end to the SVR4 printing subsystem, such as Solaris).

BSD Style Printing Commands:

lpr filename will spool the file to be printed. lpr takes a number of arguments; however, a commonly used one is -h to suppress the printing of banner pages.
lpq provides printer queue status.

SVR4 Style Printing Commands:

lp filename spools a file to be printed.

lpstat shows the print queue status. lpstat -t shows the printer status. Here is some example output:

herbie% lpstat -t
scheduler is running
system default destination: hrothgar
device for hrothgar: /dev/hrothgar
device for buddy: /dev/buddy
hrothgar accepting requests since Wed Aug 19 15:30:51 EST 1998
buddy accepting requests since Wed Aug 19 15:31:19 EST 1998
printer hrothgar is idle. enabled since Fri Feb 26 13:03:14 EST 1999. available.
printer buddy is idle. enabled since Wed Aug 19 15:31:20 EST 1998. available.

You can find a more detailed description of Unix printing under the "light sysadmin" section of this course.

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