Duke Statistics Printing
The goal of this page is to explain the Unix printing environment at Duke Statistics and some of the general guidelines for usage and maintenance.
Available printers
Name | Location | Type | Color? | Duplex? |
---|---|---|---|---|
mono017 | Room 017 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono022 | Room 022 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono026 | Room 026 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono115 | Room 115 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono211 | Room 211 | Xerox Phaser 4510DT | No | No |
duplex211 | Room 211 | Xerox Phaser 4510DT | No | Yes |
mono214 | Room 214 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
duplex214 | Room 214 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono222 | Room 222 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
mono223 | Room 223 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
duplex223 | Room 223 | Xerox Phaser 3600DN | No | Yes |
color214 | Room 214 | Xerox ColorQube 8570 | YES | Yes |
Printing from Laptops to DSS Computers
The DSS computers are now available for printing from any Duke-owned IP address. DSS users and visitors who have laptops may now print to our public printers by following these directions to install the printers on the computers: Remote Printing to DSS Printers
Notes and Changes
The printer in Rm 112 has been moved to Rm 115 and is now known asmono115
. The printer name mono112
will
continue to work for some time to facilitate transition.
Color Printing
There is a Xerox ColorQube 8570 color printer in room 214:> lpr -P color214 paper.psTo print transparencies, use Tray1 (the manual feed tray):
> lpr -P color214 -o inputslot=tray1 slides.ps
Duplex Printing
There is a Xerox Phaser 4500 duplex-capable printer in room 214:> lpr -P duplex214 paper.pswill generate duplex output. Printing to
mono214
will
generate single-sided output on the same printer.
Default printer
Your default printer is set by the PRINTER environment variable. For a new account, this is unset (commented out) in your .cshrc file, meaning your print job will go to 214. To see the current value, type:
> echo $PRINTER
To change your default printer, edit your .cshrc file (e.g. emacs ~/.cshrc). Look for the following section:
#setenv PRINTER mono112 #setenv PRINTER mono211 #setenv PRINTER mono214 #setenv PRINTER mono222 #setenv PRINTER mono223
The # at the beginning of the line denotes a comment. Uncomment the line of the most convenient printer and save the file. The change will only take effect in newly-opened terminal windows. For this change to take effect in other applications, you must logout and login again.
Using other (non-default) printers
Use the -P argument to lpr to select a specific printer. For example, to print to mono214, regardless of your default printer:
> lpr -P mono214 file
Checking the status of the printer queue
The lpq command will return status information about the number of jobs in the queue, who owns them, their order in the queue, the job id (needed for lprm), etc.
To see the print queue on your default printer:
lpq
To see the print queue on a specific printer:
lpq -P mono214
Removing print jobs from the queue
The lprm command removes jobs from the print queue. To remove a particular job, use lpq (see above) to find the job_id for your print request. Then, use the lprm command to remove the job:
lprm job_id
To remove jobs from a specific printer queue:
lpq -P mono214 lprm -P mono214 job_id
To remove all of your jobs from a printer queue:
lprm -
How can I save paper?
The easiest and most effective way is to restrict printing to only those documents which must be printed.
When printing large documents, consider using duplex214
to save double-side the output. This will cut your paper use in half.
enscript -P duplex214 file.c
You can also "two up" your printouts, printing two pages on each side of the paper. For normal text files (e.g. C code), use enscript:
enscript -2rG file.c
Combining both options will cut your paper use by a factor of 4!:
enscript -P duplex 214 -2rG file.c
For PostScript files, psnup is best:
psnup -2 file.ps | lpr
When using latex or tex, only run dvips for the pages in which you are interested. (This will also remove the need for having the whole PostScript file). For example, say you are only interested in pages 10-20,25-26 the following will give you only what you need:
dvips -pp 10-20 -pp 25-26 -o \!lpr file.dvi
When printing PostScript files, gv may be used to mark and print only those pages in which you are interested.
Weird Behavior
Netscape
Netscape 4 ignores the PRINTER environment variable. Chances are that your job went to mono214 (the system default printer). You can direct it from within the printer dialogue box by setting the Print Command to, for example, lpr -P mono223.Disappearing Jobs
If a job disappears from the queue but does not actually print, try the following:- Make sure there is paper in the printer.
If not, feel free to add some. If you have just printed a large job,
please refill the tray as a courtesy to the other users.
- Check the status of the queue using lpq.
If there are a lot of jobs ahead of yours:
- Remove your job(s) from that queue with lprm
- Check for open queues with lpc status all
- printer name
- machine you are printing from
- output of lpq command
- Use lpq to verify that you sent it to the correct printer.
- If you can view a PostScript file on your computer
(e.g. with gv),
but only a fraction of the job actually prints, try manually setting the
paper size to Letter. To create a Letter version of the ps file:
> psresize -PA4 -pletter file_a4.ps file_letter.ps
To just print the file:> psresize -PA4 -pletter file_a4.ps | lpr
- If you can view a PostScript file on your computer (e.g. with gv), but none of the job actually prints, make sure there is a showpage near the end of the file.
Toner Cartridges
New toner cartridges are in room 214 by the photocopier. New cartridges
will be in the sealed boxes. If you take the last unopened toner
cartridge, please notify one of the staff members so we can ensure that
there are always toner cartridges available. There will be a sign out
sheet at the table in 214. Please sign the cartridge out and put the
room number of the printer where the new cartridge is going. You may
leave the old Cartridge in 214 to be sent in for Recycling.
1. Remove the old cartridge from the printer.
2. Take new cartridge out of the sealed box and rotate it. Do not
shake it.
3. Pull the tab on the side to remove the seal strip.
4. Insert the new cartridge.
5. Place the old cartridge in the box and return it to room 214.
Adding Printers to Mac OS X
Users with Mac OSX computers can configure the departments public printers on their computer using these directions:
- Save this file to your desktop: macosx_add_printers.tar.gz
- Double click on it to unpack it
- Open a Terminal window
- cd into "Desktop/macosx_add_printers"
- Run the command:
sudo ./macosx_install.sh