UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am new in unix, and I need to fix a printer, but I don't even know the difference between /dev/ttys printers and lp printers. Can someone explain this to me and tell me how I cancel jobs in both of them?

I will appreciate it, thank you.

Not too many details here. I'll assume that you're using HP-UX 11.00 on some 9000/s800 box.

The tty verses lp thing is just how the printer connects to the computer.

A tty style printer uses an rs 232 serial interface. To the kernel, the device looks like an ascii terminal. So it uses the tty driver.

A lp style print uses a parallel interface and so it uses a different driver.

When the printer is setup in a software sense, one of the things you select is a "model script". This script then becomes the "interface script". You may need to tweak the interface script or you may not. But in the case of a tty printer, it must set up the baud rate and stuff. The lp style interface script must know how to set it up.

But the interface script is all that is different. The same commands should work both printers. And in either case the "cancel" command should be able to cancel a print job.

I have a problem with a printer in the unix network, is printing garbled. I assume the problem is in unix.
I think it was good to start by cancelling all printing jobs from that printer, but I wasn't able to do so. I just know to cancel jobs in lp -d formats.
The format of the printer's name is:
/dev/ttys12

Could you give me some help? I appreciate any suggestions.

You still have not provided any details about your system. If you are canceling print jobs with "lp -d" then it will be one that I'm not familiar with. I would use "lp -d" to create a print job.

Still, I do have a couple of general ideas to try. Sometimes someone will send a large unprintable print to a printer. The printer will then emit page after page of garbage. But nothing is really wrong. So your idea to cancel all of the print jobs is a good one. That might be all you need.

The next level up from this kind of thing is when someone prints some garbage to a smart printer. The printer may take the garbage as a command to go into line drawing mode or something. You need to check the docs for your printer, but everytime I have this, it could be fixed by turning the printer on and off. You definately want to try that.

And finally printers sometimes "break". Something goes wrong and they need repair. I'm not a hardware guy so I can't elaborate on that. But maybe you can swap printers between two systems. Does the problem follow the printer? Or does it stay with the unix system? That gives you a good clue where the problem is.

Use your lp commands.

lp -o "printername" #to list jobs in the queue

Use lprm to remove them, or cancel as well.


do a man for lp, and check the SEE ALSO section for other lp(printer) commands that will most likely be helpful in the future.

Thank you, now I know that the printer I have is more like a device. Stilll I can't get it to print.
I was reading about verifying getty process (this are the running process right?) and there is a command: ps -t ttysnn that shows you the actual process, and I used it and there was a process, I try killing it, but whenever I kill one, another different appears.

Then I try comparing the settings with a printer that does work, with this command: stty -a < /dev/ttys12, and the speed was different. I read that for optimum performance I needed to set the speed at 9600 baud. The problem is I don't know how to change the settings.

I read how to change them, you need to invoke sysadmsh, but I can't do that. When I type it shows: sysadmsh: not found.

Any ideas of how can I fix this?

How can I change the baud rate??