Chapter 5. LPRng Clients - lpr, lprm, lpq, lpc, lpstat

Table of Contents
5.1. Printer and Server Information
5.2. Command Line -Pprinter@host
5.3. Command Line -Pprinter
5.4. PRINTER, LPDEST, NPRINTER, and NGPRINTER Environment Variables
5.5. Wildcard Printcap Entry
5.6. First Printcap Entry
5.7. Default Printer and Server Host
5.8. Force Connection to Localhost
5.9. User Identification

The LPRng software is a true set of client/server applications. The LPRng clients, lpr, lpq, lprm, and lpc connect to a lpd server using a TCP/IP connection. This means that you must have TCP/IP networking enabled on your workstation to use LPRng.

However, you do not need to have an external network connection to the Internet. For most single system users, the lpd server is running on the same workstation as the client program, and the clients will simply talk to the localhost.

5.1. Printer and Server Information

Options used:

PRINTER, LPDEST, NPRINTER NGPRINTER Environment variables
force_localhost FLAG force clients to send requests to localhost
require_explicit_q FLAG require queue to be specified

When an LPRng client such as lpr, lpq, lprm, or lpc needs to communicate with a print server, the only information they normally need is:

The remote printer (:rp) value to be used in requests to the lpd print server. This is sometimes referred to as the printer or print queue name.
The remote server (:rm) which is the The IP address or hostname of the print server.
The original queue name specified by the user which may be used as part of the job information sent to the print server.

LPRng has several ways to specify the printer queue and server information.