Specifications

2-1
Printing Administration
Chapter 2. Printing Administration
When working with printers, system administrators must manage a spooler, real printers,
virtual printers, backends, and queues, which are all parts of the printer subsystem.
The system management information associated with printers includes:
• Printing processes on page 2-1
• Initial printer configuration on page 2-3
• Print queue operations on page 2-8
• Configuring nonsupported printers on page 2-16
• Printing with terminal–attached printers on page 2-18
• Commands and control sequences on page 2-25
• Managing print queues and print queue devices on page 2-27
• Other printer administration tasks on page 2-37
• Remote printing overview on page 2-48
• Managing and using remote printers and queues on page 2-51
Other chapters with printer management information include:
• Spooler Overview on page 3-1
• Troubleshooting the Base Operating System Spooler on page 5-1
Printing processes
When you print a file, the system sends codes to the printer. Some codes print specific
characters, such as specific alphabetic or numeric characters. Other codes control how
characters or files are printed, such as by underscoring certain characteristics or by
adjusting the page length. If you want to send different character codes to the printer, such
as changing the word that to this, you do not have to understand the underlying codes;
you merely edit the file.
To alter the way a printer works, however, you must understand what happens when you
print a file, which options you have for sending control information to the printer, and which
printer characteristics you can control.
You can use the Web–based System Manager (type wsm, and then select Printers ), the
System Manager Interface Tool (SMIT), or the qprt command to send a file to a printer. In
addition, you can use the Web–based System Manager or SMIT to cancel or prioritize a
print job. Whichever method you use to print, a file
never goes directly to the printer. All three methods first must call the enq command to
place the print request in a queue. The print request stays in the queue until a printer
becomes available, at which point the qdaemon command runs the (printer input/output
backend) piobe command. The piobe command processes the file and sends it, along with
control information, to the printer. The printer then receives a data stream containing the
contents of the file and the control information specified with the qprt command.
Controlling the printing process
You can add printer control information to the printer data stream in the following ways:
• Include printer control codes in the file.