Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Planning a Workgroup
Planning your Printer Configuration
Chapter 2112
To use a printer class, you direct print requests to it, rather than to a
specific printer. The print request is spooled to a single print queue and
printed by the first available printer in the class. Thus, printer usage can
be balanced and reliance on a particular printer can be minimized.
To create a printer class, see “Creating a Printer Class” on page 439. Also
see “Removing a Printer from a Printer Class” on page 442 and
“Removing a Printer Class” on page 443.
Print Destination
The print destination is the printer or printer class where a file will be
queued. Several commands for the LP spooler require you to specify a
print destination. You can appoint one print destination in your LP
spooler to the system default printer. Alternatively, you can assign
each user a default printer by setting a user’s shell environment called
LPDEST.
Priorities of Printers and Print Requests
Each printer has two priority attributes:
• request priority
• fence priority
Typically, print requests are handled by a printer in the order they are
received. By default, print requests have the printer’s default request
priority and are FIFO (first-in-first-out). However, print jobs can be
assigned priority values to raise or lower their priority, using the -p
option of the lp command. Priority values range from 0 to 7, with 7 being
the highest priority. See lp (1) for details.
A print request priority can be altered by using the lpalt command. A
printer’s default request priority can be set using the lpadmin command
(SAM allows a default request priority other than zero to be set when a
printer is added, but cannot change a printer’s default request priority).
See lpadmin (1M) and lpalt (1) for details.
If multiple print requests are waiting to be printed on a specific printer
and all have priorities high enough to print, the printer will print the
next print request with the highest priority. If more than one print
request has the same priority, print requests with that priority will print
in the order they were received by the LP spooler.