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1 | .\" This file Copyright (C) 1992-1997 Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com> |
2 | .\" It may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, | |
3 | .\" version 2, or any higher version. See section COPYING of the GNU General | |
4 | .\" Public license for conditions under which this file may be redistributed. | |
5 | .\" $Id: tunelp.8,v 1.6 1997/06/20 16:10:35 janl Exp $ | |
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6 | .TH tunelp 8 "26 August 1992" "Cohesive Systems" "Linux Programmer's Manual" |
7 | .SH NAME | |
8 | tunelp \- set various parameters for the lp device | |
9 | .SH SYNOPSIS | |
10 | \fBtunelp\fP \fI<device>\fP [-i \fI<IRQ>\fP | -t \fI<TIME>\fP | -c \fI<CHARS>\fP | -w \fI<WAIT>\fP | -a [on|off] | -o [on|off] | -C [on|off] | -r | -s | -q [on|off] ] | |
11 | .SH DESCRIPTION | |
12 | \fBtunelp\fP sets several parameters for the /dev/lp\fI?\fP devices, for better | |
13 | performance (or for any performance at all, if your printer won't work | |
14 | without it...) Without parameters, tells whether the device is using | |
15 | interrups, and if so, which one. With parameters, sets the device | |
16 | characteristics accordingly. The parameters are as follows: | |
17 | ||
18 | -i \fI<IRQ>\fP is the IRQ to use for the parallel port in question. If this | |
19 | is set to something non-zero, -t and -c have no effect. If your port | |
20 | does not use interrupts, this option will make printing stop. | |
21 | .B tunelp -i 0 | |
22 | restores non-interrupt driven (polling) action, and your printer should | |
23 | work again. If your parallel port does support interrupts, | |
24 | interrupt-driven printing should be somewhat faster and efficient, and | |
25 | will probably be desireable. | |
26 | ||
27 | -t \fI<TIME>\fP is the amount of time in jiffies that the driver waits if the | |
28 | printer doesn't take a character for the number of tries dictated by | |
29 | the -c parameter. 10 is the default value. If you want fastest | |
30 | possible printing, and don't care about system load, you may set this | |
31 | to 0. If you don't care how fast your printer goes, or are printing | |
32 | text on a slow printer with a buffer, then 500 (5 seconds) should be | |
33 | fine, and will give you very low system load. This value generally | |
34 | should be lower for printing graphics than text, by a factor of | |
35 | approximately 10, for best performance. | |
36 | ||
37 | -c \fI<CHARS>\fP is the number of times to try to output a character to the | |
38 | printer before sleeping for -t \fI<TIME>\fP. It is the number of times around | |
39 | a loop that tries to send a character to the printer. 120 appears to | |
40 | be a good value for most printers. 250 is the default, because there | |
41 | are some printers that require a wait this long, but feel free to | |
42 | change this. If you have a very fast printer like an HP laserjet 4, a | |
43 | value of 10 might make more sense. If you have a \fIreally\fP old | |
44 | printer, you can increase this farther. | |
45 | ||
46 | Setting -t \fI<TIME>\fP to 0 is equivalent to setting -c \fI<CHARS>\fP | |
47 | to infinity. | |
48 | ||
49 | -w \fI<WAIT>\fP is the a busy loop counter for the strobe signal. While most | |
50 | printers appear to be able to deal with an extremely short strobe, | |
51 | some printers demand a longer one. Increasing this from the default | |
52 | 0 may make it possible to print with those printers. This may also | |
53 | make it possible to use longer cables. | |
54 | ||
55 | -a [on|off] This is whether to abort on printer error -- the default | |
56 | is not to. If you are sitting at your computer, you probably want to | |
57 | be able to see an error and fix it, and have the printer go on | |
58 | printing. On the other hand, if you aren't, you might rather that | |
59 | your printer spooler find out that the printer isn't ready, quit | |
60 | trying, and send you mail about it. The choice is yours. | |
61 | ||
62 | -o [on|off] This option is much like -a. It makes any open() of this | |
63 | device check to see that the device is on-line and not reporting any | |
64 | out of paper or other errors. This is the correct setting for most | |
65 | versions of lpd. | |
66 | ||
67 | -C [on|off] This option adds extra ("careful") error checking. When | |
68 | this option is on, the printer driver will ensure that the printer is | |
69 | on-line and not reporting any out of paper or other errors before | |
70 | sending data. This is particularly useful for printers that normally | |
71 | appear to accept data when turned off. | |
72 | ||
73 | -s This option returns the current printer status, both as a | |
74 | decimal number from 0..255, and as a list of active flags. When | |
75 | this option is specified, -q off, turning off the display of the | |
76 | current IRQ, is implied. | |
77 | ||
78 | -o, -C, and -s all require a Linux kernel version of 1.1.76 or later. | |
79 | ||
80 | -r This option resets the port. It requires a Linux kernel version of | |
81 | 1.1.80 or later. | |
82 | ||
83 | -q [on|off] This option sets printing the display of the current IRQ | |
84 | setting. |