72.17 Printer Remote Host with rlpr

Out of Date

A collection of Debian machines can be serviced by a remote printer server running a printer daemon lpd. A simple approach to printing is then to install rlpr. This provides the commands rlpr, rlpq, and rlprm. They can be used as replacements for the usual lpr, lpq, and lprm commands. You can make these `aliases'' permanent by linking them into/usr/local/bin` as in:

  # cd /usr/local/bin
  # ln -s /usr/bin/rlpr  lpr
  # ln -s /usr/bin/rlpq  lpq
  # ln -s /usr/bin/rlprm lprm

To specify the pinter on which to print you need to include in the printer name the print server host, as in -Plp1@artz.togaware.com. This can be improved on by creating a /etc/rlprrc file with something like:

  artz.togaware.com: lp1 lp1nd lp5 lp5t lp7 lp9

Make sure the protections on the file allow everyone to read the file. Then when specifying a printer, simply mention its name, as in -Plp1 or set the PRINTER environment variable to "lp1".

Your donation will support ongoing availability and give you access to the PDF version of this book. Desktop Survival Guides include Data Science, GNU/Linux, and MLHub. Books available on Amazon include Data Mining with Rattle and Essentials of Data Science. Popular open source software includes rattle, wajig, and mlhub. Hosted by Togaware, a pioneer of free and open source software since 1984. Copyright © 1995-2022 Graham.Williams@togaware.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0