Notes for the New Astronomy Print-Spooling System

In Jan 2004, printspool.astro.washington.edu was updated from the old lpd-based printing on mimas to the new CUPS-based printing on azazyel. These are a few notes on how to use the new system from the astronomy linux workstations.

What the heck is "CUPS"?

CUPS stands for the Common UNIX Printing System, more info about which may be found at www.cups.org.

How do I use this new print system?

There's nothing special you need to do to use the new print system, just continue using what you have in the past -- although if you use any special options, those may need to be modified (see below).

Hence, from the command line, you just:

lpr filename

or, if you want to specify a specific printer/queue:

lpr -P print-queue filename

All the routing to the new print spooler takes place down in the "guts" of the printing system, so any software that submits printing via the lpr command/interface should just work.

What printers/print-queues are available? What state are the queues in?

You can see the list of available print queues and their current state from the command line via the command:

lpstat -p -d

or from a web-browser at:

http://printspool.astro.washington.edu:631/printers

On the webpage, you can click on any printer name to see the list of jobs queued for that printer.

Ack! I didn't mean to print that! How do I cancel a job?

You cancel print jobs by their job-id number, which you can find either from the web-link listed above, or from the command:

lpstat -u

This will give you a list of all your currently queued jobs, any of which you many then cancel via:

lprm job-id

How do I print in single-sided mode?

If you've looked at the list of print queues, you may be wondering where the queues such as eris-single and such have gone. And if they're gone, how you are going to print single-sided when needed? Well, you can now control those options such as single-sidedness with the "option" flag to the lpr command. (Gosh, an option flag... what will they think up next!)

The options that you might find useful, although not all will be supported by all printers, are:

-o landscape
-o number-up=n
-o sides=one-sided
-o sides=two-sided-long-edge
-o sides=two-sided-short-edge
-o media=media,...
   where media is one of:
   Size: Letter, Legal, A4
   Tray: Upper, Lower, MultiPurpose
-o page-ranges=range,...
   where range is either a single page number n, or a range n-m

For example, to print single-sided landscapes on eris, which prints double-sided portraits by default, use the command:

lpr -P eris -o landscape -o sides=one-sided filename

Where can I find out more about the features of the new CUPS system and how to use them?

The CUPS system has more features and options than I have space to list here, so if you're interested in more, you need to look at the documentation. A local copy of the CUPS Software Users Manual may be found at:

http://printspool.astro.washington.edu:631/sum.html

2004-03-15 WRS