topic Re: setting up a dummy printer in Operating System - HP-UX

setting up a dummy printer

Unix Administrator_5 — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:14:59 GMT

I need to set up a printer that accepts
requests but does not actually print anything -- maybe sends it to /dev/null. I have an application that requires a print queue be active; however, we have no need to print.

Re: setting up a dummy printer

Mark Grant — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:19:43 GMT

Simple, set up a printer whose device is /dev/null

lpadmin -p dummy -i dummy -v /dev/null

or something very similar :)

Re: setting up a dummy printer

Unix Administrator_5 — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:24:12 GMT

can i use hippi to do this?

Re: setting up a dummy printer

Mark Grant — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:35:48 GMT

I don't know because I don't know what hppi is. You can probably do it with sam though. Just specify /dev/null as the device.

Re: setting up a dummy printer

doug mielke — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:39:21 GMT

I don't think hppi will give you a choice of /dev/null.

lpadmin will though.

Also, this /dev/null printer is handy for when you have many print jobs to delete.
rather than using cancel, you can lpmove the failed jobs to this bogus printer to dispose of them.

Re: setting up a dummy printer

Unix Administrator_5 — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 13:28:47 GMT

I was able to create the queue with the following command;

lpadmin -pdevnullprinter -esome_existing_printer_script -v/dev/null

However, all jobs sent to it queue
even after accpet and enable.

Re: setting up a dummy printer

doug mielke — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:44:07 GMT

lpadmin -pbogus -i/dev/null -v/dev/null

This should create printer bogus that will send print jobs to dev/null

Re: setting up a dummy printer

doug mielke — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:09:48 GMT

Hello UA,
It appears that your existing model / interface script disables your printer when it gets a non zero return code after the job attempts to print.
( If enable printername can be run twice in a row, and the second time you do not get an already enabled messege, this is likely whats happening.) This causes the jobs to stay in the queue.

the above lpadmin -pbogus -i/dev/null -v/dev/null works. I guess we never error when reading /dev/null as an interface input?

Re: setting up a dummy printer

Unix Administrator_5 — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:25:39 GMT

I was finally able to get this to work by doing the following:

lpshut
lpadmin -pdevnullprinter -mdumb -v/dev/null
lpsched
accept
enable