lpc
is used by the system administrator to control the
operation of the line printer system.
For each line printer configured in
/etc/printcap,
lpc
may be used to:
disable or enable a printer,
disable or enable a printer's spooling queue,
rearrange the order of jobs in a spooling queue,
find the status of printers, and their associated
spooling queues and printer daemons.
Without any arguments,
lpc
will prompt for commands from the standard input.
If arguments are supplied,
lpc
interprets the first argument as a command and the remaining
arguments as parameters to the command.
The standard input may be redirected causing
lpc
to read commands from file.
Commands may be abbreviated;
the following is the list of recognized commands.
\&?[ command...]
help[ command...]
Print a short description of each command specified in the argument list,
or, if no argument is given, a list of the recognized commands.
abort{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Terminate an active spooling daemon on the local host immediately and
then disable printing (preventing new daemons from being started by
lpr(1))
for the specified printers.
clean{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Remove any temporary files, data files, and control files that cannot
be printed (i.e., do not form a complete printer job)
from the specified printer queue(s) on the local machine.
disable{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Turn the specified printer queues off.
This prevents new printer jobs from being entered into the queue by
lpr(1).
[]...
Turn the specified printer queue off, disable printing and put
message
in the printer status file.
The message doesn't need to be quoted, the
remaining arguments are treated like
echo(1).
This is normally used to take a printer down and let users know why.
lpq(1)
will indicate the printer is down and print the status message.
enable{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Enable spooling on the local queue for the listed printers.
This will allow
lpr(1)
to put new jobs in the spool queue.
exit
quit
Exit from
lpc.
restart{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Attempt to start a new printer daemon.
This is useful when some abnormal condition causes the daemon to
die unexpectedly, leaving jobs in the queue.
lpq(1)
will report that there is no daemon present when this condition occurs.
If the user is the superuser,
try to abort the current daemon first (i.e., kill and restart a stuck daemon).
start{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Enable printing and start a spooling daemon for the listed printers.
status{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Display the status of daemons and queues on the local machine.
stop{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Stop a spooling daemon after the current job completes and disable
printing.
topqprinter\ [\ jobnum\ ...\ ]\ [\ user\ ...\]
Place the jobs in the order listed at the top of the printer queue.
up{\ all\ |\ printer\ }
Enable everything and start a new printer daemon.
Undoes the effects of
down.
FILES
/etc/printcap
printer description file
/var/spool/output/*
spool directories
/var/spool/output/*/lock
lock file for queue control
DIAGNOSTICS
"?Ambiguous command"
Abbreviation matches more than one command.
"?Invalid command"
No match was found.
"?Privileged command"
You must be a member of group
“operator”
or user
“root”
to execute this command.