NAME
lpc - line printer control program

SYNOPSIS
/usr/etc/lpc [ command [ argument ... ] ]

DESCRIPTION
Lpc is used by the system administrator to control the operation of
the line printer system. For each line printer configured in
/etc/printcap, lpc may be used to:

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.

Without any arguments, lpc will prompt for commands from the
standard input. If arguments are supplied, lpc interprets the
first argument as a command and the remaining arguments as
parameters to the command. The standard input may be redirected
causing lpc to read commands from file. Commands may be
abbreviated; the following is the list of recognized commands.

? [ command ... ]

help [ command ... ]
Print a short description of each command specified in the
argument list, or, if no arguments are given, a list of the
recognized commands.

abort { all | printer ... }
Terminate an active spooling daemon on the local host
immediately and then disable printing (preventing new daemons
from being started by lpr) for the specified printers.

clean { all | printer ... }
Remove any temporary files, data files, and control files that
cannot be printed (i.e., do not form a complete printer job)
from the specified printer queue(s) on the local machine.

disable { all | printer ... }
Turn the specified printer queues off. This prevents new
printer jobs from being entered into the queue by lpr.

down { all | printer } message ...
Turn the specified printer queue off, disable printing and put
message in the printer status file. The message doesn’t need
to be quoted, the remaining arguments are treated like
echo(1). This is normally used to take a printer down and let
others know why (lpq(1) will indicate the printer is down and
print the status message).

enable { all | printer ... }
Enable spooling on the local queue for the listed printers.
This will allow lpr to put new jobs in the spool queue.

exit

quit Exit from lpc.

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 will report that there is no
daemon present when this condition occurs. If the user is the
super-user, try to abort the current daemon first (i.e., kill
and restart a stuck daemon).

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.

stop { all | printer ... }
Stop a spooling daemon after the current job completes and
disable printing.

topq printer [ jobnum ... ] [ user ... ]
Place the jobs in the order listed at the top of the printer
queue.

up { all | printer ... }
Enable everything and start a new printer daemon. Undoes the
effects of down.

FILES
/etc/printcap printer description file
/usr/spool/* spool directories
/usr/spool/*/lock lock file for queue control

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

DIAGNOSTICS
?Ambiguous command abbreviation matches more than one command
?Invalid command no match was found
?Privileged command command can be executed by root only