PRINTSTATUS(1) Printing Tools PRINTSTATUS(1)
NAME
printstatus - graphical printer status tool
SYNOPSIS
printstatus [ options... ] printername
PrintStatus is an alias for printstatus
DESCRIPTION
printstatus, also known as PrintStatus, provides a graphical interface
for monitoring printers under the AT&T System V print spooling system.
The program can be displayed on 24-bit, 8-bit, and 1-bit X displays.
Command Line Options
-e updateInterval
Specifies the interval, in seconds, between updates of the
printer engine status information. This includes the icon
itself and the Current Printer Status area of the
interface. This information is polled whether printstatus
is iconified or not.
-q updateInterval
Specifies the interval, in seconds, between updates of the
printer request queue status. This includes the queue
itself; the information in the "Printer Request Queue"
area of the printstatus window. This information is NOT
polled when the printstatus is iconified.
-s updateInterval
Specifies the interval, in seconds, between updates of the
spooler system status. This includes the general spooler
information, including whether the spooler queue for this
printer is enabled or disabled. This information is NOT
polled when the printstatus window is iconified.
-iconic A very useful method of invoking printstatus is either to
invoke it with the -iconic X Toolkit option or to iconify
it once running. When iconified, printstatus continues to
monitor the printer, and the application icon will change
to reflect the current printer state. If the icon
displays an undesirable state, opening the icon will give
detailed information on the printer's condition.
When iconified, printstatus performs only the minimal
amount of polling necessary to keep the icon updated
properly. Therefore, iconifying printstatus is good
etiquette when monitoring shared network printers, as the
iconified printstatus generates very little load on your
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PRINTSTATUS(1) Printing Tools PRINTSTATUS(1)
network and on your network host.
printername Specifies the printer that is to perform the printing.
printername specifies the printer name. If the printername
option is not specified then the printer selected will be
the value of the LPDEST environment variable. If LPDEST is
not set, the system default printer will be selected. If
there is no system default printer, an error message to
that effect will be printed and the program will exit.
Program Usage
The printstatus program presents a status panel that consists of four
main areas. These areas are the menu bar, the printer information and
icon area, the printer status message area, and the printer queue area.
These areas are described below.
Menu Bar The menu bar provides four submenus: Printer, Queue, Other
Tools, and Help.
The Printer menu contains options to send a test page to the
printer, to request that the printer status be updated
immediately, and to quit the program. Note that the test page
will not be affected by any printer-specific settings you may
have set using the PrintPanel tool.
The Queue menu contains options to cancel jobs and to modify
queueing options. To cancel a job, select that job in the
queue, and then select the cancel job menu option. If the job
you select was not submitted from your workstation, the cancel
job menu choice will be disabled. To set queueing options, you
must be running the tool as the system adminstrator. To toggle
job acceptance for the local printer queue, simply select the
menu choice Printer Accepting Your Jobs and the state of that
function will be toggled. To toggle job printing for the local
printer queue, simply select the menu choice Printer Printing
Your Jobs and the state of that function will be toggled. The
state of these toggle buttons is automatically updated at set
intervals in case the printer queue is modified from outside
PrintStatus.
The Other Tools menu allows you to launch other printing-
related tools, such as the PrintPanel for submitting jobs and
setting printer-specific options, PrintManager for adding and
deleting printers, and PrintStatus for another printer. If any
of these programs is not properly installed, its menu entry
will be greyed out.
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PRINTSTATUS(1) Printing Tools PRINTSTATUS(1)
The Help menu allows you to launch an online help dialog, which
should provide helpful information. It better, or it isn't
doing its job.
Printer Information And Icon Area
The top left portion of the printstatus main panel contains the
printer status icon, and the top right contains several lines
of information about that printer. The icon graphically
displays the current state of the printer being monitored.
There are three states: Idle, Printing, and Faulted. The idle
state is indicated by a plain printer icon on a green
background. The Printing state is indicated by a printer icon
plus a stack of waiting paper on a yellow background. The
faulted state is indicated by a broken printer on a red
background. (See the Printer Status Message Area description
below for more detailed status.)
The textual printer information presented is the name of the
printer as known to your local spooler, the model and type of
printer as it was installed on the printer host, and the method
of connection. If the printer is locally connected, a device
such as '/dev/plp' will be listed here. If the printer is a
remote printer connected to another system, the name of that
host system will be listed.
Printer Status Message Area
This area contains two major features. First is the current
printer state, which is one of Idle, Printing, or Faulted.
These states correspond to the green, yellow, and red icons,
respectively. Detailed printer status information is presented
in the scrollable list immediately below. Look in this area to
determine what the nature of the faulted condition may be.
Common problems such as out of paper or offline are easily
diagnosed from where you sit using this information.
If the printer you are monitoring is not an Impressario
printer, it may not be capable of reporting this detailed
status. In that case the icon and the status area may not ever
change, and a message to that effect will be placed in the
status area. In this case you may find it useful to resize the
status list area by dragging the lower sash up to the upper
sash, thereby conserving screen real estate. You may also wish
to upgrade the printer server to an Impressario printer server
to obtain the detailed feedback which that package provides.
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PRINTSTATUS(1) Printing Tools PRINTSTATUS(1)
Printer Queue Area
The jobs currently in the queue for this printer are displayed
here. To cancel a job, select that job and then pull down the
queue menu, releasing your mouse button on the Cancel Selected
Job entry. If you are running the tool as the administrator,
you may also be provided with the opportunity to forward the
job to another printer.
PROGRAM RESOURCES
printstatus is written using the standard X toolkit and the Motif widget
set. The program accepts all standard Xt/Motif resources and command line
options.
NOTES
printstatus submits test jobs only to the AT&T System V print spooler.
The BSD spooling system is not currently supported.
printstatus by default updates the status information every 5 seconds,
the queue every 15 seconds, and the general information such as the
presence of the Other Tools menu entries and queueing state (enabled,
accepting) every 30 seconds. These values may be changed by specifying
the -e, -q, and -s options. Remembering that these values are polled at
set intervals may be helpful in understanding why some status updates are
not immediate. Selecting Update Printer Status immediately updates all
three classes of status information, without resetting any of the other
timers.
KNOWN BUGS
printstatus polls for spooler information by using libspool(3), which,
because of limitations in the System VR3 spooler, must use rshd(1M) to
query remote spooler information. If your printer host has access
logging turned on, this polling behavior can result in large system log
files if users leave their printstatus windows around for long periods.
The proper solution to this is to iconify your printstatus windows:
printstatus does not use rshd(1M) to query engine status (see -e switch,
above), and thus will not log accesses on the printer host. Iconifying
printstatus generates the lowest resource utilization: all engine status
queries are done via the highly efficient RPC mechanism inside libpod(3).
SEE ALSO
lp(1), lpadmin(1M), PrintPanel(1)
FILES
/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Printstatus Program resource file
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