LPC(8)

💖 LPC(8) — the line printer control program, bestie edition 💖

System Manager's Manual · LPC(8) · ok so this is the lpc page and we're gonna get through it together 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

lpc — line printer control program 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

lpc [command [argument ...]]

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

okay so lpc is the thing the system administrator uses to run the whole line printer situation. no cap. for every single line printer you've got configured in /etc/printcap, lpc can do all of this:

• disable or enable a printer,
• disable or enable a printer's spooling queue,
• rearrange the order of jobs in a spooling queue,
• find the status of printers, and their associated spooling queues and printer daemons.

so iconic honestly.

If you run it with no arguments at all, lpc will just sit there and prompt you for commands from the standard input. main character energy. but if you do pass arguments, lpc treats the first one as a command and the rest as parameters for that command. and yes bestie, the standard input can be redirected, which makes lpc read its commands from a file. very demure, very mindful.

Commands can be abbreviated! (short queen behavior 🎀) here's the full list of recognized commands:

• ? [command ...]
• help [command ...] — Print a short description of each command specified in the argument list. or, if you gave it no argument at all, it just prints the list of the recognized commands. it's giving built-in cheat sheet ✨
• abort { all | printer } — Immediately terminate an active spooling daemon on the local host, and then disable printing for the specified printers. disabling printing is what stops new daemons from being started by lpr(1). so yeah, it's a hard stop 😭
• clean { all | printer } — Remove any temporary files, data files, and control files that cannot be printed (i.e., ones that don't form a complete printer job) from the specified printer queue(s) on the local machine. cleaning out the leftovers, periodt 🧚
• disable { all | printer } — Turn the specified printer queues off. This prevents new printer jobs from being entered into the queue by lpr(1). 🚫
• down { all | printer } message [...] — Turn the specified printer queue off, disable printing, and put message in the printer status file. the message does not need to be quoted — the remaining arguments are treated like echo(1). this is normally used to take a printer down and let users know why. lpq(1) will indicate the printer is down and print the status message. communicating, bestie 💬
• enable { all | printer } — Enable spooling on the local queue for the listed printers. This will allow lpr(1) to put new jobs in the spool queue. we love a comeback story 🌈
• exit
• quit — Exit from lpc. bye bestie 👋
• restart { all | printer } — Attempt to start a new printer daemon. This is useful when some abnormal condition causes the daemon to die unexpectedly, leaving jobs in the queue. lpq(1) will report that there is no daemon present when this condition occurs. And if the user is the superuser, it tries to abort the current daemon first (i.e., kill and restart a stuck daemon). glow-up via violence 💀
• start { all | printer } — Enable printing and start a spooling daemon for the listed printers. 🚀
• status { all | printer } — Display the status of daemons and queues on the local machine. the vibe check 👑
• stop { all | printer } — Stop a spooling daemon after the current job completes and disable printing. finishing the sentence first, so polite 🎀
• topq printer [ jobnum ... ] [ user ... ] — Place the jobs in the order listed at the top of the printer queue. queue-jumping but make it authorized 💅
• up { all | printer } — Enable everything and start a new printer daemon. Undoes the effects of down. the redemption arc ✨

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/printcap — printer description file
• /var/spool/output/* — spool directories
• /var/spool/output/*/lock — lock file for queue control

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🔥 DIAGNOSTICS 🔥

• ?Ambiguous command — Abbreviation matches more than one command. can't decide? then no. 😭
• ?Invalid command — No match was found. literally nothing. 💀
• ?Privileged command — You must be a member of group “operator” or user “root” to execute this command. sorry bestie, this one's above your pay grade 🚫👑

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

lpq(1), lpr(1), lprm(1), printcap(5), lpd(8)

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💜 HISTORY 💜

The lpc command appeared in 4.2BSD. an elder. a legend. we stan a historical icon 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one came from Debian and it's dated May 31, 2007 — yeah she's vintage, but she still ate 💅✨🎀