lpr(1B) manual page
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lpr - send a job to the printer
/usr/ucb/lpr [ -P printer
] [ -# copies ] [ -C class ] [ -J job ] [ -T title ] [ -i [ indent ] ] [ -w
cols ] [ -m ] [ -h ] [ -s ] [ -filter_option ] [ filename ... ]
SUNWscpu
lpr forwards printer jobs to a spooling area for subsequent
printing as facilities become available. Each printer job consists of copies
of, or, with -s , complete pathnames of each filename you specify. The spool
area is managed by the line printer spooler, lpsched. lpr reads from the
standard input if no files are specified.
- -P printer
- Send output to
the named printer. In the absence of the -P option, the queue to the printer
specified by the PRINTER
variable in the environment is used. If the PRINTER
variable is not set, and the LPDEST
environment variable is not set,
the queue for the default printer is used.
- -# copies
- Produce the number
of copies indicated for each named file. For example:
- lpr -#3 index.c lookup.c
- produces three copies of
- index.c, followed by three copies of lookup.c. On
the other hand,
- cat index.c lookup.c | lpr -#3
- generates three copies of the
concatenation of the files.
- -C class
- Print class as the job classification
on the burst page. For example,
- lpr -C Operations new.index.c
- replaces the
system name (the name returned by
- hostname) with Operations on the burst
page, and prints the file new.index.c.
- -J job
- Print job as the job name on
the burst page. Normally, lpr uses the first file’s name.
- -T title
- Use title
instead of the file name for the title used by pr(1)
.
- -i[indent]
- Indent output
indent SPACE
characters. Eight SPACE
characters is the default.
- -w cols
- Use
cols as the page width for pr.
- -m
- Send mail upon completion.
- -h
- Suppress printing
the burst page.
- -s
- Use the full pathnames (not symbolic links) of the files
to be printed rather than trying to copy them. This means the data files
should not be modified or removed until they have been printed. -s only prevents
copies of local files from being made. Jobs from remote hosts are copied
anyway. -s only works with named data files; if the lpr command is at the
end of a pipeline, the data is copied to the spool.
- filter_option
- The following single letter options notify the line printer
spooler that the files are not standard text files. The spooling daemon
will use the appropriate filters to print the data accordingly.
- -p
- Use
pr to format the files (lpr -p is very much like pr | lpr).
- -l
- Print control
characters and suppress page breaks.
- -t
- The files contain troff(1)
(cat phototypesetter)
binary data.
- -n
- The files contain data from ditroff (device independent troff).
- -d
- The files contain data from tex (DVI
format from Stanford).
- -g
- The files
contain standard plot data as produced by the plot(1B)
routines.
- -v
- The
files contain a raster image. The printer must support an appropriate imaging
model such as PostScript in order to print the image.
- -c
- The files contain
data produced by cifplot.
- -f
- Interpret the first character of each line as
a standard FORTRAN
carriage control character.
If no filter_option is given
(and the printer can interpret PostScript), the string ‘%!’ as the first
two characters of a file indicates that it contains PostScript commands.
These filter options offer a standard user interface, and all options may
not be available for, nor applicable to, all printers.
- /etc/passwd
- personal identification
- /usr/lib/lp/lpsched
- System V line printer spooler
- /var/spool/lp/tmp/*
- directories used for spooling
- /var/spool/lp/tmp/system/*-0
- spooler control files
- /var/spool/lp/tmp/system/*-N
- (N is an integer and
> 0) data files specified in ‘*-0’ files
lp(1)
, lpc(1B)
, lpq(1B)
, lprm(1B)
, lpstat(1)
, plot(1B)
, pr(1)
,
troff(1)
, lpsched(1M)
- lpr: printer: unknown printer
- The printer
was not found in the LP
database. Usually this is a typing mistake; however,
it may indicate that the printer does not exist on the system. Use ‘lpstat
-p’ (see lpstat(1)
) or ‘lpc status’ (see lpc(1B)
) to discover the reason.
- lpr: error on opening queue to spooler
- The connection to lpsched on the
local machine failed. This usually means the printer server started at boot
time has died or is hung. Check if the printer spooler daemon /usr/lib/lpsched
is running.
- lpr: printer: printer queue is disabled
- This means the queue
was turned off with
- /usr/etc/lpc disable printer
- to prevent
- lpr from putting
files in the queue. This is normally done by the system manager when a printer
is going to be down for a long time. The printer can be turned back on by
a super-user with lpc.
- lpr: Can’t send message to the LP print service
- lpr:
Can’t receive message from the LP print service
- These indicate that the
LP
print service has been stopped. Get help from the system administrator.
- lpr: Received unexpected message from LP print service
- It is likely there
is an error in this software. Get help from system administrator.
- lpr: There
is no filter to convert the file content
- Use the ‘lpstat -p -l’ command to
find a printer that can handle the file type directly, or consult with
your system administrator.
- lpr: cannot access the file
- Make sure file names
are valid.
lp is the preferred interface.
Command-line options cannot
be combined into a single argument as with some other commands. The command:
- lpr -fs
is not equivalent to
- lpr -f -s
Placing the -s flag first, or writing
each option as a separate argument, makes a link as expected.
lpr -p is not
precisely equivalent to pr | lpr. lpr -p puts the current date at the top
of each page, rather than the date last modified.
Fonts for troff(1)
and
TdEuX
reside on the printer host. It is currently not possible to use local
font libraries.
lpr objects to printing binary files.
The -s option, intended to use symbolic links in SunOS, does not use symbolic
links in the compatibility package. Instead, the complete path names are
used. Also, the copying is avoided only for print jobs that are run from
the printer host itself. Jobs added to the queue from a remote host are
always copied into the spool area. That is, if the printer does not reside
on the host that lpr is run from, the spooling system makes a copy the
file to print, and places it in the spool area of the printer host, regardless
of -s.
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