8.1 Introduction

Tru64 UNIX supports the ability for users to print both to local printers connected directly to a system's parallel or serial ports and to remote printers via the network. A remote printer can be either another computer's locally connected printer or a standalone network printer. In addition, it may be necessary to provide printing services for other remote clients. Tru64 UNIX supports this print-server ability through the lpd(8) print daemon.

This chapter covers the following Tru64 UNIX printing topics:

• The printer daemon and spooling system

• Local printing

• Remote printing

• Utilities and commands to configure and manage the print services

• Advanced printing

8.2 The Tru64 UNIX Printing Subsystem

The printing subsystem on a Tru64 UNIX system is primarily BSD UNIX-based, with the main characteristic being the /etc/printcap configuration file. The BSD UNIX-style print commands include lpr(1), lprm(1), lpq(1), and lpc(8). In addition, Tru64 UNIX supports UNIX System V printing commands such as lp(1) and lpstat(1). Either version of the print commands is acceptable. For instance, these two commands to submit a print job to the draft print queue are equivalent:

    # lpr -P draft memo.txt    # lp -d draft memo.txt<a name="568"></a><a name="IDX-270"></a>

The Tru64 UNIX printing subsystem is managed by the lpd printer daemon. This daemon is typically started when the system enters multiuser mode (run level 3) and runs continuously. Any queued print jobs that were not printed when the system was last shut down are printed when lpd starts up.