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LPD(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual LPD(8)
NAME
lpd - line printer spooler daemon
SYNOPSIS
lpd [-cdlpsFW46] [port#]
DESCRIPTION
The lpd utility is the line printer daemon (spool area handler) and is
normally invoked at boot time from the rc(8) file. It makes a single
pass through the printcap(5) file to find out about the existing printers
and prints any files left after a crash. It then uses the system calls
listen(2) and accept(2) to receive requests to print files in the queue,
transfer files to the spooling area, display the queue, or remove jobs
from the queue. In each case, it forks a child to handle the request so
the parent can continue to listen for more requests.
Available options:
-c By default, if some remote host has a connection error while
trying to send a print request to lpd on a local host, lpd will
only send error message to that remote host. The -c flag causes
lpd to also log all of those connection errors via syslog(3).
-d Turn on SO_DEBUG on the Internet listening socket (see
setsockopt(2)).
-l The -l flag causes lpd to log valid requests received from the
network. This can be useful for debugging purposes.
-p The -p flag is a synonym for the -s flag. It is being
deprecated, and may be removed in a future version of lpd.
-s The -s (secure) flag causes lpd not to open an Internet listening
socket. This means that lpd will not accept any connections from
any remote hosts, although it will still accept print requests
from all local users.
-F By default, lpd will daemonize into the background. The -F flag
causes lpd to remain in the foreground. Logging is still
performed with syslog(3).
-W By default, the lpd daemon will only accept connections which
originate from a reserved-port (<1024) on the remote host. The
-W flag causes lpd to accept connections coming from any port.
This is can be useful when you want to accept print jobs from
certain implementations of lpr written for Windows.
-4 Inet only.
-6 Inet6 only.
-46 Inet and inet6 (default).
port# The Internet port number used to rendezvous with other processes
is normally obtained with getservbyname(3) but can be changed
with the port# argument.
to leave free so that the line printer queue will not completely fill the
disk. The minfree file can be edited with your favorite text editor.
The daemon begins processing files after it has successfully set the lock
for exclusive access (described a bit later), and scans the spool
directory for files beginning with cf. Lines in each cf file specify
files to be printed or non-printing actions to be performed. Each such
line begins with a key character to specify what to do with the remainder
of the line.
J Job Name. String to be used for the job name on the burst page.
C Classification. String to be used for the classification line on
the burst page.
L Literal. The line contains identification info from the password
file and causes the banner page to be printed.
T Title. String to be used as the title for pr(1).
H Host Name. Name of the machine where lpr(1) was invoked.
P Person. Login name of the person who invoked lpr(1). This is
used to verify ownership by lprm(1).
M Send mail to the specified user when the current print job
completes.
f Formatted File. Name of a file to print which is already
formatted.
l Like ``f'' but passes control characters and does not make page
breaks.
p Name of a file to print using pr(1) as a filter.
t Troff File. The file contains troff(1) (ports/textproc/groff)
output (cat phototypesetter commands).
n Ditroff File. The file contains device independent troff output.
r DVI File. The file contains Tex l output DVI format from
Stanford.
g Graph File. The file contains data produced by plot(3).
c Cifplot File. The file contains data produced by cifplot.
v The file contains a raster image.
r The file contains text data with FORTRAN carriage control
characters.
1 Troff Font R. Name of the font file to use instead of the
default.
2 Troff Font I. Name of the font file to use instead of the
default.
the text filters.
I Indent. The number of characters to indent the output by (in
ASCII).
U Unlink. Name of file to remove upon completion of printing.
N File name. The name of the file which is being printed, or a
blank for the standard input (when lpr(1) is invoked in a
pipeline).
Z Locale. String to be used as the locale for pr(1).
If a file cannot be opened, a message will be logged via syslog(3) using
the LOG_LPR facility. The lpd utility will try up to 20 times to reopen
a file it expects to be there, after which it will skip the file to be
printed.
The lpd utility uses flock(2) to provide exclusive access to the lock
file and to prevent multiple daemons from becoming active simultaneously.
If the daemon should be killed or die unexpectedly, the lock file need
not be removed. The lock file is kept in a readable ASCII form and
contains two lines. The first is the process id of the daemon and the
second is the control file name of the current job being printed. The
second line is updated to reflect the current status of lpd for the
programs lpq(1) and lprm(1).
FILES
/etc/printcap printer description file
/var/spool/* spool directories
/var/spool/*/minfree minimum free space to leave
/dev/lp* line printer devices
/var/run/printer socket for local requests
/etc/hosts.equiv lists machine names allowed printer access
/etc/hosts.lpd lists machine names allowed printer access, but not
under same administrative control.
SEE ALSO
lpq(1), lpr(1), lprm(1), setsockopt(2), syslog(3), hosts.lpd(5),
printcap(5), chkprintcap(8), lpc(8), pac(8)
Ralph Campbell, 4.2 BSD Line Printer Spooler Manual.
HISTORY
An lpd daemon appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 April 15, 2021 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11