The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

Printing And Printer Queues

Printing & Printer Queues

Stacey Clark

No matter what area of engineering you are studying, it will not be very many days into the semester before you will be sitting in front of a computer terminal working on projects and printing output. To send a file to a printer you would use the lpr programs as described in the previous article. UNIX will respond to your lpr command with instruction on where to pick up your printout. For example,

% lpr -Pkp long.pgm.f
OUTPUT = "clarkst" in CHME 118 (KD)
Please pick up output within 24 hours

Sometimes after you've sent a file off for processing and printing you discover you

• need to make a program correction
• sent a job to a non-working printer
• sent your work to the wrong printer

Don't despair, all is not lost! At the ECN when you send a job to a printer, it is automatically placed in the printer queue to await processing by that printer.

For example, if you sent a file containing many pages of program code to the Printronix printer, kp, then realized that kp is a graphics printer and you should have selected the Dataprinter, kd, you can remedy the situation.

First list the lpr queue using the lpq command for kp.

% lpq -Pkp
kp is ready and printing
Rank   Owner    Job  Files       Total Size
active clarkst  912  grap.plot   31386 bytes
1st    clarkst  913  long.pgm.f  46679 bytes

Having UNIX list the queue for the kp machines allows you to see your job waiting to be printed and gives you a "Job number". Using the "Job number" with the line printer remove command, lprm, permits you to delete your job from the printing queue. The command syntax is: lprm, the printer name preceded by the -P option, and the "Job number".

% lprm -Pkp 913
cb.ecn.purdue.edu: dfA913cn.ecn.purdue.edu dequeued
cb.ecn.purdue.edu: cfA913cn.ecn.purdue.edu dequeuedg

Checking the kp queue confirms that job 913 had been removed.

% lpq -Pkp
kp is ready and printing
Rank   Owner    Job  Files      Total Size
active clarkst  912  grap.plot  31386 bytes

You can now send your file off to the Dataprinter, kd.

% lpr -Pkd long.pgm.f
OUTPUT = "clarkst" in CHME 118 (KD)
Please pick up output within 24 hours

HTML