lpc — line printer
control program
lpc |
[command
[argument ...]] |
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).
down
{ all | printer }
message [...]- 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.
topq
printer [ 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.
- /etc/printcap
- printer description file
- /var/spool/output/*
- spool directories
- /var/spool/output/*/lock
- lock file for queue control
The lpc command appeared in
4.2BSD.