LinuxQuestions.org - removing printer jobs

- Linux - Newbie (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/)

- - removing printer jobs (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/removing-printer-jobs-223129/)

removing printer jobs

After I compiled a new Kernel (2.6) my printer (hp Laserjet 2100/4) worked perfectly but I had a lot of jobs that were waiting to be printed out and so they were because I didn't know how to stop them.
So my question is: How can I remove specific printer jobs? (the easy way is the nicest )

I run Debian and openbox. (I know Konqueror have an easy way to do it but since I have openbox I can't do it that way)

Thanks!

I don't think this is necessarily the easiest way but it will work on pretty much any UNIX printing system.

Open a terminal and type:

Code:

lpq

This will list all the print jobs, with an ID number and the name of the file being printed and the printing user.

You can remove the print job with a given ID using:

Code:

lprm ID

(You will need to be the owner of the print job to remove the job).

Thanks for the fast reply!
It worked perfectly but when I typed lpq I got

samel@confused:~$ lpq
lp is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job Files Total Size
active samel 3 (standard input) 646166 bytes
1st samel 4 (standard input) 1003436 bytes

Is there maybe a way that it could be more specific? "standard input" doesn't really tell me what file it is...

"standard input" means that the file has been taken from the standard input (stdin) stream passed to lpq (or cupsd or whatever).

It's basically a default name used when the printing program doesn't bother to tell the print server what the job is called.

Sometimes you can just tell by the size of the print job.

You can fix this on the client side by using, for example,

Code:

lpr -t "Title" -

as the print command instead of

Code:

lpr -

. How to change this depends on the software being used; sometimes you may have to edit code (or petition the writers of the program) to put a document name on the print job.

You can see which documents are printing by looking in the appropriate place under /var/spool. For example, under CUPS, you will have a directory /var/spool/cups containing files like (for instance) d000ID-001. If you open these files with gv (in an X windows terminal)

Code:

gv /var/spool/cups/d000ID-001

it will show you what the contents of the file being printed are (assuming it's been converted to PostScript, which is usually the case).

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee