DOKK / manpages / debian 10 / lpr / lprm.1.en
LPRM(1) General Commands Manual LPRM(1)

lprm — remove jobs from the line printer spooling queue

lprm [-] [-Pprinter] [[job# ...] [user ...]]

lprm will remove a job, or jobs, from a printer's spool queue. Since the spooling directory is protected from users, using lprm is normally the only method by which a user may remove a job. The owner of a job is determined by the user's login name and host name on the machine where the lpr(1) command was invoked.

Options and arguments:

printer
Specify the queue associated with a specific printer (otherwise the default printer is used).
-
If a single “-” is given, lprm will remove all jobs which a user owns. If the superuser employs this flag, the spool queue will be emptied entirely.
user
Causes lprm to attempt to remove any jobs queued belonging to that user (or users). This form of invoking lprm is useful only to the superuser.
job#
A user may dequeue an individual job by specifying its job number. This number may be obtained from the lpq(1) program, e.g., 
% lpq -l

1st:ken				[job #013ucbarpa]
	(standard input)	100 bytes
% lprm 13

If neither arguments or options are given, lprm will delete the currently active job if it is owned by the user who invoked lprm.

lprm announces the names of any files it removes and is silent if there are no jobs in the queue which match the request list.

lprm will kill off an active daemon, if necessary, before removing any spooling files. If a daemon is killed, a new one is automatically restarted upon completion of file removals.

If the following environment variable exists, it is utilized by lprm:

If the environment variable PRINTER exists, and a printer has not been specified with the -P option, the default printer is assumed from PRINTER.

/etc/printcap
Printer characteristics file.
/var/spool/output/*
Spooling directories.
/var/spool/output/*/lock
Lock file used to obtain the PID of the current daemon and the job number of the currently active job.

Printed if the user tries to remove files other than his own.

lpq(1), lpr(1), lpd(8)

The lprm command appeared in 3.0BSD.

Since there are race conditions possible in the update of the lock file, the currently active job may be incorrectly identified.

May 31, 2007 Debian