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printcap
As with the termcap file,
each entry in the printcap file is separated by a colon. Boolean
characteristics, such as suppressing the header
(sh), exist by themselves.
Characteristics that can take on a value, such as the name of the output device,
are followed by an equal sign (=) and the value (lp=/dev/lp1). For a complete
list of characteristics, see the printcap man-page.
Each entry in the
/etc/printcap file consists of single logical line. There is one entry for each
printer on your system. To make the entry easier to read, you can break each
logical line into several physical lines. As an example, lets look at the entry
for the default, generic printer:
lp:lp=/dev/lp1:sd=/usr/spool/lp1:sh
The first part of the line is the name of the printer, in this case, lp.
Each field is separated from the others with a colon, so in this example, there
are three fields (plus the printer name).
If we were to break this
example into multiple physical lines, it might look like this:
lp:\
:lp=/dev/lp1:\
:sd=/usr/spool/lp1:\
:sh
At
the end of each physical line, there is a back-slash
to tell lpd that the
logical line continues. You'll also see that each field now has a colon before it
and after it.
Although it is not necessary, you may find a file minfree
in each of the spool directories. This is a simple text
file that contains the
number of disk blocks that should be left to keep the print spooler
from filling
up the disk. As a safety mechanism on a system with a lot of print jobs, the spool
directory can be put on a separate file system. Should it fill up, the rest of
the system won't suffer.
Often, data is sent directly to the printer
devices, either because it is supposed to be raw ASCII
text
or because the
program that created the data did its own formatting. This is referred to as raw
data as the system doesn't do anything with it.
Sometimes the data is sent
by the lpd daemon
through another program that processes the data in preparation
of sending it to the printer. Such programs are called filters. The stdin
of the
input filters receive what the lpd puts out. The stdout
of the filter then goes
to printer. Such filters are often called input filters and are specified in the
printcap file with if=.
Because of this behavior, a print filter can be
anything that understands the concept of stdin
and stdout.
In most cases on Linux, the input filters that I have seen are simply shell scripts. However,
they can also be perl scripts.
With the exception of an input filter or a
log file (which is specified using lf=), I have rarely used any other option for
local printing. However, using the printcap file, you can configure your printer
to print on a remote system, which is the subject of the next section.
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