The printing subsystem of UNIX System V is one of several standardized systems for printing on Unix, and is typical of commercial System V-based Unix versions such as Solaris and SCO OpenServer. A system running this print architecture could traditionally be identified by the use of the user command as the primary interface to the print system, as opposed to the BSD Line Printer Daemon protocol| command (though some systems provide as an alias to ).

Typical user commands available to the System V printing system are:

  • : the user command to print a document
  • : shows the current print queue
  • : deletes a job from the print queue
  • : a system administration command that configures the print system
  • : a system administration command that moves jobs between print queues

History

In the Unix programming model, device files are special files that act as access points to peripheral devices such as printers. For example, the first line printer on a Unix system might be represented by a file in the device () directory, i.e., . Using the file metaphor, a document could by printed by "copying" the file onto the device: . While this worked well enough for the case where there was one printer per user, this model did not scale out well to multiple users having to share one printer.

The same text is used in the 2nd (1996) edition.

The same text is used in the 4th (2003) edition.

  • lp
  • lpstat
  • Printing administration on Solaris 10