lp[0en2] are character devices for the parallel line printers;
they have major number 6 and minor number 0en2. The minor numbers
correspond to the printer port base addresses 0x03bc, 0x0378 and 0x0278.
Usually they have mode 220 and are owned by root and group lp. You can
use printer ports either with polling or with interrupts. Interrupts
are recommended when high traffic is expected, e.g. for laser
printers. For usual dot matrix printers polling will usually be
enough. The default is polling.
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 only influences 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 only influences 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() 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.
FILES
/dev/lp*
AUTHORS
The printer driver was originally written by Jim Weigand and Linus
Torvalds. It was further improved by Michael K. Johnson. The
interrupt code was written by Nigel Gamble. Alan Cox modularised it.
LPCAREFUL, LPABORT, LPGETSTATUS were added by Chris Metcalf.