lp - line printer devices
lp[0–2] are character devices for the parallel line
printers; they have major number 6 and minor number 0–2. The minor
numbers correspond to the printer port base addresses 0x03bc, 0x0378, and
0x0278. Usually they have mode 220 and are owned by user root and
group lp. You can use printer ports either with polling or with
interrupts. Interrupts are recommended when high traffic is expected, for
example, for laser printers. For typical dot matrix printers, polling will
usually be enough. The default is polling.
The following ioctl(2) calls are supported:
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPTIME, int arg)
- Sets the amount of time that the driver sleeps before rechecking the
printer when the printer's buffer appears to be filled to arg. If
you have a fast printer, decrease this number; if you have a slow printer,
then increase it. This is in hundredths of a second, the default 2 being
0.02 seconds. It influences only the polling driver.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPCHAR, int arg)
- Sets the maximum number of busy-wait iterations which the polling driver
does while waiting for the printer to get ready for receiving a character
to arg. If printing is too slow, increase this number; if the
system gets too slow, decrease this number. The default is 1000. It
influences only the polling driver.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPABORT, int arg)
- If arg is 0, the printer driver will retry on errors, otherwise it
will abort. The default is 0.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPABORTOPEN, int arg)
- If arg is 0, open(2) will be aborted on error, otherwise
error will be ignored. The default is to ignore it.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPCAREFUL, int arg)
- If arg is 0, then the out-of-paper, offline, and error signals are
required to be false on all writes, otherwise they are ignored. The
default is to ignore them.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPWAIT, int arg)
- Sets the number of busy waiting iterations to wait before strobing the
printer to accept a just-written character, and the number of iterations
to wait before turning the strobe off again, to arg. The
specification says this time should be 0.5 microseconds, but experience
has shown the delay caused by the code is already enough. For that reason,
the default value is 0. This is used for both the polling and the
interrupt driver.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPSETIRQ, int arg)
- This ioctl(2) requires superuser privileges. It takes an int
containing the new IRQ as argument. As a side effect, the printer will be
reset. When arg is 0, the polling driver will be used, which is
also default.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPGETIRQ, int *arg)
- Stores the currently used IRQ in arg.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPGETSTATUS, int *arg)
- Stores the value of the status port in arg. The bits have the
following meaning:
LP_PBUSY |
inverted busy input, active high |
LP_PACK |
unchanged acknowledge input, active low |
LP_POUTPA |
unchanged out-of-paper input, active high |
LP_PSELECD |
unchanged selected input, active high |
LP_PERRORP |
unchanged error input, active low |
- Refer to your printer manual for the meaning of the signals. Note that
undocumented bits may also be set, depending on your printer.
- int ioctl(int
fd, LPRESET)
- Resets the printer. No argument is used.
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