How to check if a Printer is Defined on another UNIX Print Server

[Alzhy]

Does anyone have any quick trick to check from one UNIX machine if a printer is defined on another UNIX machine (acting as a print server)?

Am developing a script to add printers pointing to printers defined on a designated UNIX print server. One check I'd like to add is to check whether the printer is defined on the remote UNIX Print Server. It seems "lpadmin" when performing an add, does not check the existence of the printer on the Print Server.

Thanks.

[Geoff Wild]

The only way I can think of is to use a remote command - like remsh or ssh to that server and execute
lpstat -pQUEUENAME

Now, if the queues are different, then you have more work...

Basically, you would have to do a remsh (or ssh) to the remote system, and grep for the hostname in /etc/lp/interface/*

or ip address if you use ip's instead of hostnames (which is a bad thing!).

Rgds...Geoff

[Michael Bush]

I'm not sure how it would be done in a script (since the rlpstat command should not be invoked manually), but I do know of a way to do it from a Windows system using lpq:

C:\>lpq -Sgdosux.atl.hp.com -Psos01101

no entries
gdosux: Warning: sos01101 is down

gdosux: sos01101: ready and waiting

lpq -Ssystemname -Premoteprintername

[Bill Hassell]

Only the local system knows if it has printers attached, so you'll need to run lpstat -v on the remote system. Stay away from lpstat -t as it performs remote interrogation on network and shared printers and can easily hang.