When a printer has been out of paper, or had a paper jam, or some other condition that keeps it from giving output for several minutes, the lpq command ceases to indicate the particular condition, and simply shows it as "stalled(n sec)", with n>>1000. So if you see this message, you need to go to the printer itself and find out what is wrong.
On the other hand, when a condition has been corrected, the lpq command may continue to report the condition for about a minute more; so a warning like "No paper tray" when the paper has just been reloaded can usually be ignored. You can likewise ignore the warning "No daemon present" when a job has just been submitted after the queue was empty.
If you submit a job which is a binary file our printing software cannot identify (e.g. a compiled program), you will get no output, and lpq will report this error.
If a printer is malfunctioning, e.g., if the output is marred by light or dark streaks, or if it jams repeatedly, send electronic mail to the address trouble from any of the Mathematics Department machines, stating the problem. Be sure to specify the name of the printer in your e-mail!
On the other hand, for problems involving misbehavior of text formatting programs (TeX, troff, etc.) seek information by the usual modes: the man command, departmental computing web pages, knowledgeable friends, or mail to consult. Mail sent to trouble should only concern misbehavior of output devices (printers, computers, etc.), not software.
Mail to either consult or trouble should be as precise and informative as possible, since a lot of time gets wasted if the recipient has to write back asking for more details.
If you sent a file to a printer and nothing came out, then there is a way to find out more information on why it did not print. (Note, however, that this requires some computer expertise on your part to interpret the output.)
First, log in to the machine printserver-1.math.berkeley.edu if you are not already logged in to it (it is more commonly known as blue1, or yuban).
Next, type the command:
/local/sol/2.6/depot/LPRng-3.6.12/bin/lpq -v -P744 > file
where -P744 should be changed to refer to the printer in question. Note that the output is being sent to a file; this is because it is quite verbose.
Now use your favorite text editor to edit the output file, to look for a reason why your job did not print. Note that there are two sections of the output file; you should look at both parts.
Please do not use public printers for making identical multiple copies. This delays other users' jobs and wastes cpu. Make one orginal and photocopy it.
If you accidentally send to a printer a job which you will not need, you should remove it. All your current jobs on a given printer can be removed with a command such as
lprm -P744 -
If you have several jobs and only want to remove some of them, use the lpq command to determine the corresponding job numbers, and give the command
lprm -P744 job.nos
(Output device job numbers should not be confused with job numbers of suspended and background commands, shown by the jobs command, or with process numbers, shown by the ps command.)
The lprm command must be given by the same user who submitted the original job, and must be executed on the same machine.
At times, you will only need to print certain pages of a document (e.g., a page on which you have just made a small change). Most document formatting programs provide a way to specify a subset of pages to be output. Learn about these, e.g. the command dviselect for TeX, the "-ppM-N" option of dvips, or the "-oM-N" option of (di)troff.
For information on how to save paper on ordinary lpr output, by using smaller fonts and several columns per page, see the file /u/gbergman/Public/spew.aliases.
If your file is PostScript, you have a second way to print it single-sided (other than appending s to the printer name). Edit the PostScript file and insert the lines
statusdict/setduplexmode known{false
statusdict/setduplexmode get exec}if
immediately after the initial batch of lines beginning with "%". If it's a dvi file, you can convert it to PostScript and do the same.
Last updated 9 February 2006