Printer Priority

[Tom Dawson]

Is there a way to set priority levels among printers in a class?
The "lp -p" and "lpadmin -g" options refer to priorities of print jobs.
I want to have two printers in a class and designate one as a "primary" and use the other printer only when the primary fails/jams etc.
tia

[Ian Dennison_1]

have you looked at Printer Classes? A quick and dirty way (without purchasing a separate print management product) would be to create a Printer Class with all Printers in it, but the non-primary printers 'disable'd.

You could then direct all printouts to the Class as their destination rather than their Printer Name?
This would probably still use both printers, but would hopefully provide a seamless failover to the Application or Users if a printer goes down.

Share and Enjoy! Ian

[Craig Rants]

Tom,
I have never seen (which does not mean it is not capable) the ability to have a failover print que. That being said, I would set one printer as your default, lpadmin -dprinter1, and then have a cronjob ( or some type of job )
check all your default print que and if it is not printing move the print jobs to another printer, lpmove PRINTJOB# printer2.

That is just how I would do it.

Good Luck,
C

[Ian Dennison_1]

Sorry Tom, grabbed a previous document from my home directory and obviously got the wrong one.

Whoops, Ian (-3 points)