xref: /freebsd/share/doc/smm/07.lpd/6.t (revision 3494f7c019fc6558a99f63b7f647373b89bcde92)
Copyright (c) 1983, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.

Line printer Administration

The lpc program provides local control over line printer activity. The major commands and their intended use will be described. The command format and remaining commands are described in lpc (8).

abort and start

Abort terminates an active spooling daemon on the local host immediately and then disables printing (preventing new daemons from being started by lpr ). This is normally used to forcibly restart a hung line printer daemon (i.e., lpq reports that there is a daemon present but nothing is happening). It does not remove any jobs from the queue (use the lprm command instead). Start enables printing and requests lpd to start printing jobs.

enable and disable

Enable and disable allow spooling in the local queue to be turned on/off. This will allow/prevent lpr from putting new jobs in the spool queue. It is frequently convenient to turn spooling off while testing new line printer filters since the root user can still use lpr to put jobs in the queue but no one else can. The other main use is to prevent users from putting jobs in the queue when the printer is expected to be unavailable for a long time.

restart

Restart allows ordinary users to restart printer daemons when lpq reports that there is no daemon present.

stop

Stop halts a spooling daemon after the current job completes; this also disables printing. This is a clean way to shutdown a printer to do maintenance, etc. Note that users can still enter jobs in a spool queue while a printer is stopped .

topq

Topq places jobs at the top of a printer queue. This can be used to reorder high priority jobs since lpr only provides first-come-first-serve ordering of jobs.