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Checking the Printer Queue

When you send your job to the printer it goes to a spool area where it is put onto the printer queue. To check where your job is in the printer queue, you can use the lpq command. The general form of the command is:

    lpq -Pprintername

For example, to check the print jobs on the printer soup:

    % lpq -Psoup

To check the only print jobs on the printer soup owned by angies:

    % lpq -Psoup angies

Here is an example:

    % lpq -Psoup
    Queue soup on ives.orchestra.cse.unsw.EDU.AU
      Ready since Jun 29 11:18:44.
    Remote printer soup.ps on score.orchestra.cse.unsw.EDU.AU
      Printing (started at Jun 29 15:50:52, attempt 1).
      Rank Owner    Pr  Job Host        Files                  Form   Size Time
    active s2191640 X   875 fife03      (stdin)                   - 302.0K 15:47
       1st s2191640 X   876 fife03      (stdin)                   - 146.2K 15:47
       2nd s2191640 X   877 fife03      (stdin)                   - 454.5K 15:47
       3rd s2191640 X   878 fife03      (stdin)                   -   1.1M 15:47
       4th s2191640 X   879 fife03      (stdin)                   - 211.8K 15:47
       5th s2191640 X   881 fife03      wk08.ps                   - 127.2K 15:49
       6th s2172328 X   846 fife13      vis1.ps                   - 785.0K 15:49

As you can see, the output is arranged in rows, with one row per print job.

• Rank is the job's current rank in the queue. An active job is the one which is currently printing.
• Owner is the username of the person who sent the file to the printer.
• Pr is the job priority, generally not used.
• Job is the job number -- you will need the job number if you want to remove your job from the queue.
• Host is the computer from which the print job was sent.
• Files is the names of the files which were sent to the printer. Jobs which have been piped to lpr will show as (stdin).
• Size is the total size of the print job. Note that this is the number of bytes in the PostScript file, not the number of pages.
• Time is the time the job was sent.

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