Printing from Unix

The command to print from a Unix system to any of our network printers is:

lpr -P//queuename// //filename//

…where queuename is the name of the print queue (usually the room number). The queues accept many file types directly, such as image files and PDF as well as text or Postscript. Additional print options can be specified to select features such as duplex or portrait/landscape orientation.

We use CUPS (common unix printing system) for both Tru64 and Linux systems.

For complete information on printing options, please refer to the CUPS User Manual at http://www.cups.org/.

For quick reference, some example options include:

• Where multiple trays are available, you can select which tray to print from using the -o media switch. For example:

    lpr -o media=Upper filename
    lpr -o media=Lower filename

• Most duplex-capable printers are set to print on both sides by default. You can control this behaviour using the -o sides switch.

    lpr -o sides=two-sided-long-edge filename
    lpr -o sides=two-sided-short-edge filename
    lpr -o sides=one-sided filename

• You can control orientation using the -o landscape switch.

    lpr -o portrait filename
    lpr -o landscape filename

Some of these options are quite wordy; however you can use the lpoptions command to set up default settings to suit your preference (see the CUPS user manual for details). To view the available options, and their current settings for a particular printer, use the lpoptions -l command - for example,

lpoptions -p 216 -l

If you want to select a particular printer as default, use the lpoptions -d command. You can then use this printer without having to use the -P parameter. For example:

lpoptions -d 216

You can check the contents and status of a print queue using the lpstat command. For example,

lpstat 216

You can check queue and job status online by checking the print server jobs listing (this link will only work within Tate Lab).

To print to the Tosiba copiers (358c and 431c), you need to specify your Department printing code. This is tedious to specify on the CUPS command line, but it can be done using the DCDigit1… DCDigit5 options.

Say your Department Code is 10203. Your command to print would be:

lpr -P 358c -o DCDigit1=1 -o DCDigit2=0 -o DCDigit3=2 -o DCDigit4=0 -o DCDigit1=5 filename

You can avoid having to specify the code every time, by storing it using lpoptions. For example:

lpoptions -o DCDigit1=1 -o DCDigit2=0 -o DCDigit3=2 -o DCDigit4=0 -o DCDigit5=3 -p 358c

Note there are several possible places for your output to be delivered; you can control this using the OutputTray option. The default is the Inner tray (beneath the control panel).

You can print to our print queues from a remote unix system, by piping your file through the “ssh” command. For example:

bash> cat myfile.ps |ssh physics.umn.edu "cat - |lpr -P342"

If you often need to print from a remote site, it should be fairly simple to embed these commands into a convenient script or alias. For example, if you use tsch:

tcsh> alias lp342 'cat \!\!:1 | ssh physics.umn.edu "cat - |lpr -P342"'
tcsh> lp342 myfile.ps