Manual page for LPR(1)
lpr - send a job to the printer
SYNOPSIS
lpr
[
-Pprinter
]
[
-#copies
]
[
-Cclass
]
[
-Jjob
]
[
-Ttitle
]
[
-i
[
indent
] ] [
-1234font
]
[
-wcols
]
[
-r
] [
-m
] [
-h
] [
-s
] [
-filter-option
]
[
filename
...
]
DESCRIPTION
lpr
creates a printer job in a spooling area for subsequent printing as
facilities become available.
Each printer job consists of a control file and one or more
data files. The data files are
copies of
(or, with
-s ,
symbolic links to) each
filename
you specify.
The spool area is managed by the line printer daemon,
lpd.8
Jobs that specify a printer on a remote machine are
forwarded by
lpd.
lpr
reads from the standard input if no files are specified.
OPTIONS
- -Pprinter
-
Send output to the named
printer.
Otherwise send output to the printer named in the
PRINTER
environment variable, or to the default printer,
lp.
- -#copies
-
Produce the number of
copies
indicated for each named file. For example:
-
example% lpr -#3 index.c lookup.c
produces three copies of
index.c,
followed by three copies of
lookup.c.
On the other hand,
-
example% cat index.c lookup.c | lpr -#3
generates three copies of the concatenation of the files.
- -Cclass
-
Print
class
as the job classification on the
burst page.
For example,
-
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.
- -Jjob
-
Print
job
as the job name on the
burst page. Normally,
lpr
uses the first file's name.
- -Ttitle
-
Use
title
instead of the file name for the title
used by
pr.1v
- -i[ indent ]
-
Indent output
indent
SPACE
characters. Eight
SPACE
characters is the default.
The indent is passed to the input filter.
If no input filter is present, this option
is ignored.
- -1 font
-
- -2 font
-
- -3 font
-
- -4 font
-
Mount the specified
font
on font position
1,
2,
3
or
4.
The daemon will construct a
.railmag
file in the spool directory that
indicates the mount by referencing
/usr/lib/vfont/font.
- -wcols
-
Use
cols
as the page width for
pr.
- -r
-
Remove the file upon completion of spooling,
or upon completion of printing with the
-s
option.
- -m
-
Send mail upon completion.
- -h
-
Suppress printing the burst page.
- -s
-
Create a symbolic link from the spool
area to the data files rather than trying to copy
them (so large files can be printed).
This means the data files should
not be modified or removed until they
have been printed.
This option can be used to avoid truncating
files larger than the maximum given in the
mx
capability of the
printcap.5
entry.
-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.3x
routines (see also
plot.1g
for the filters used by the printer spooler).
- -v
-
The files contain a raster image, see
rasterfile.5
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.
FILES
- /etc/passwd
-
personal identification
- /etc/printcap
-
printer capabilities data base
- /usr/lib/lpd
-
line printer daemon
- /var/spool/l*
-
directories used for spooling
- /var/spool/l*/cf*
-
daemon control files
- /var/spool/l*/df*
-
data files specified in
`cf'
files
- /var/spool/l*/tf*
-
temporary copies of
`cf'
files
- /usr/lib/vfont/font
-
SEE ALSO
lpq.1
lprm.1
plot.1g
pr.1v
screendump.1
troff.1
plot.3x
printcap.5
rasterfile.5
lpc.8
lpd.8
DIAGNOSTICS
- lpr: copy file is too large
-
A file is determined to be too ``large''
to print by copying into the spool area.
lpr
truncates the file, and prints as much of it as it can.
The maximum file length is specified by the
mx
capability of the
printcap.5
entry for the printer. If no
mx
capability is specified, the default limit is 1000 Kbytes.
Use the
-s
option as defined above to make a symbolic
link to the file instead of copying
it.
- lpr: printer: unknown printer
-
The
printer
was not found in the
printcap
database. Usually this is a typing mistake; however, it may indicate
a missing or incorrect entry in the
/etc/printcap
file.
- lpr: printer: jobs queued, but cannot start daemon.
-
The connection to
lpd
on the local machine failed.
This usually means the printer server started at
boot time has died or is hung. Check the local socket
/dev/printer
to be sure it still exists (if it does
not
exist,
there is no
lpd
process running).
- lpr: printer: printer queue is disabled
-
This means the queue was turned off with
-
example% /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.
If a connection to
lpd
on the local machine cannot be made
lpr
will say that the daemon cannot be started.
Diagnostics may be printed in the daemon log file
regarding missing spool files by
lpd.
BUGS
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
TEX®
reside on the printer host.
It is currently not possible to use local font libraries.
lpr
refuses to print a.out files and library archives.
The
-s
option only avoids copying the data file to the spool directory
of the local machine. If the printer for a job resides on a
remote machine, the data file will be copied to the remote spool
directory in all cases.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved.
Last modified 11/5/97