19.8. LPC Requests

LPRng has extended the RFC1179 protocol to allow queue and printer control commands to be sent to the lpd server. The format of these commands are:

    \006printer user key [options]

The following commands are supported.

Table 19-3. LPC Commands

Command	Operation
Command	Operation
`active [printer[@host]]`	check to see if server accepting connections
`abort (printer[@host] \| all)`	terminate server process printing job
`disable (printer[@host] \| all)`	disable queueing
`debug (printer[@host] \| all) debugparms`	set debug level for printer
`enable (printer[@host] \| all)`	enable queueing
`hold (printer[@host] \| all) (name[@host] \| job \| all)*`	hold job
`holdall (printer[@host] \| all)`	hold all jobs on
`kill (printer[@host] \| all)`	stop and restart server
`lpd [printer[@host]]`	get lpd PID for server
`lpq (printer[@host] \| all) (name[@host] \| job \| all)*`	invoke lpq
`lprm (printer[@host] \| all) (name[@host]\|host\|job\| all)*`	invoke lprm
`move printer (user\|jobid)* target`	move jobs to new queue
`noholdall (printer[@host] \| all)`	hold all jobs off
`printcap (printer[@host] \| all)`	report printcap values
`quit`	exit LPC
`redirect (printer[@host] \| all) (printer@host \| off )*`	redirect jobs
`release (printer[@host] \| all) (name[@host] \| job \| all)*`	release job
`reread [printer[@host]]`	lpd reread database information
`start (printer[@host] \| all)`	start printing
`status (printer[@host] \| all)`	status of printers
`stop (printer[@host] \| all)`	stop printing
`topq (printer[@host] \| all) (name[@host] \| job \| all)*`	reorder job
`defaultq`	default queue for lpd server
`local (printer \| all)`	client printcap and configuration information
`server (printer \| all)`	server printcap and configuration information

Many of these commands support extremely specialized operations for print queue management, However, the following are the most commonly used and are supported by the BSD lpd print spooling system as well:

start, stop, enable, disable Start and stop will start and stop printing for a specified queue. Enable and disable enable and disable sending and/or accepting jobs for the queue.
abort, kill Abort will cause the process doing the actual job printing to be terminated. Kill does an abort, and then restarts the printing process. These commands are used to restart a queue printing after some disaster.
topq Places selected jobs at the top of the print queue.
status Shows a status display of the print spools on the server.

The following commands are extensions to the basic set provided by the BSD lpd system.

lpq, lprm Invokes the lpq or lprm program from lpc. Useful when in the interactive mode.
hold, holdall, release The hold command will cause the selected jobs to be held until released. The holdall jobs sets all jobs submitted to the queue to be held until released. The release command releases jobs for printing. If a job has had an error and is in the error state, the release command will cause it to be reprinted.
move, redirect The move command will move selected jobs to the specified spool queue. The redirect command sends all jobs submitted to the queue to be sent to the specified queue.
active, lpd, reread The active command will connect to the server for the printer. This is used to check to see if non-LPRng print servers are active. The lpd command will connect to the server and get the process id (PID) of the lpd server. The reread command causes a SIGHUP signal to be sent to the lpd process, causing it to reread the lpd.conf, printcap, and lpd.perms files. This is done when configuration information has been modified and the administrator wants to have the server use the new information.
debug This is a desperation facility for developers that allows dynamic enabling of debug information generation. Not normally used in general operation.
local, server These commands will print out the configuration information in the local lpd.conf file, as well as the printcap information for the specified printers; client prints what the LPRng clients (lpr, lpq, ...) would use while server prints what the LPRng server (lpd) would use if running on this host. This is an extremely useful diagnostic tool for administrators. Not normally used in general operation.