sys-utils/tunelp.8

   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 $
   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.