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Controlling Printer Jobs

Ever been sitting at your terminal wondering if your output has printed yet? Or have you ever sent output to the printer and then realized that you didn't really want to print that file? Here is a little information that may help you out in these situations.

You can determine if your job is still in the printer queue by using the lpq command. To see the queue for a specific printer, type

                            lpq -Pxx

where xx is the name of the printer. For example, to see the queue for the msd printer you would use the command:

                            lpq -Pmsd

which might produce the output:

Rank       Owner       Job       Files            Total Size

active     sally       9         output          11516 bytes
1st        tsk         10        standard input   3678 bytes
2nd        goldsted    5         pmtoday.c        3109 bytes
3rd        clarkst     11        prog.f           3413 bytes
4th        harlow      24        Makefile         1699 bytes

If your job is not listed, it has printed and you should go pick up your output. Otherwise, you will be able to see how far down in the queue you are.

If ever you don't really want to print a job you have already sent to the printer, you would use the lprm command to remove the job from the print queue. (MAYBE you're a conservationist and want to help save a tree by reducing paper waste or MAYBE you want to help save your pocketbook if your job was sent to a pay laser.) To remove a specific job from the printer queue, you would type in the command

                          lprm -Pxx nn

where xx was the printer name and nn was the job number from an lpq listing. For example, harlow could remove his job from the above print queue by typing:

                          lprm -Pmsd 24

For more information about the lpq and lprm commands type

           help lpq        and/or           help lprm

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