Printing

Printing

Each UNIX printer defined in LIONS is defined as [dept]-[dept.printer name] (ex. ece-rm231, cae-yoda, aero-hp4si, cee-hp4, etc.) This was done to eliminate confusion as many printers have same or similar names in different departments.

Using the lpq or lpstat commands and Cancelling Print Jobs

The UNIX lpq or lpstat commands can not be used to check the status of your pending jobs on LIONS clients. Because of the LIONS centralized printing scheme, all jobs are immediatedly sent to the central print server in the OCCS when submitted. If you use lpq or lpstat on the local host, you will always see "no entries". This may be confusing, especially if the printer is not printing. If the central print server is having communication issues with the UNIX printer, all print jobs destined for the printer will "queue" on central print server. Once the printing problem is resolved your pending print job will resume printing. However, many users send multiple print requests when the printer is down. Once communication is restored between printer and print server the queued jobs may "take over" the printer preventing other users from printing.

To cancel a print job you must call the OCCS Operations Center at ext. 5113. Give the OCCS Operation staff member the full name of the printer (i.e. cae-yoda, math-5a) and ask them to cancel the print job in question. If the job is still in the queue they will cancel. However, once the job leaves the central print server, little can be done to stop it.

Printer Support

The UNIX Support Group is not responsible for the maintenance of any departmental printer (such as replacing ink, toner, clearing paper jams, or refilling printer paper). All maintenance issues are to be reported to either a Lab Assistant or your professor.

Printer Support

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do I set up a default printer?

A. To set up a default printer type the following command using the default shell (tcsh) in LIONS,

$ setenv PRINTER printername

where printername is the name of the desired printer. If using the bash or the sh shell, the command is

$ PRINTER=printername; export PRINTER

To make sure that this shows up every time you login, you need to change your .cshrc (for tcsh) or your .profile (bash,sh) file to issue these commands automatically when you log in.