printer queue to print to a file

[Unix Administrator_5]

Is it possilbe to setup a printer queue that will print directly to a file rather than a printer. We are using hpux 11.0.

Any tips on doing this?

Thanks,

Jon

[Manish Srivastava]

Hi,

setup the printer device as a file:

lpadmin -pprinter -v/tmp/file -m
this will print the contents to this file.

manish.

[Anupam Anshu_1]

You can set the printer name as a . Doing this, lp will print to the file.

BTW, you can use cat(1) to do the same :-).

Anshu

[Bruno Ganino]

Use lpadmin with option -v

(-vdevice associates a new device with printer P. Device is the pathname of a file that is writable by lp).

Bruno

[KapilRaj]

/etc/lp/interface should hv some shell scripts (backends for printing). Edit that and change it accordingly so that it wrintes to a file rather than printing

Kaps

[Unix Administrator_5]

The printer has to be a defined queue. A program will be sending to it.

The reason I need this is we have an application that sends pintjobs to various remote printers that run a certain printing software. It seems that the output at times is garbled. The tech. people of the printing software want to see the data as it comes out of the sending application. So, the best that we have come up with is to have a queue that will direct it's output to a file.

Thanks for the ideas so far. -- Jon

[Jose Mosquera · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon,

May be this idea looks crazy but think about it like an alternative.

All printer request go to a corresponding spool directory placed into /var/spool/lp/request/

Always two files are generated by each request. One of them is a header file (begin with c*) an other is data file (begin with d*). Both of then are associated by job-id.
So if you have a printer, always disabled, you can develop a script file that handle this files according with you criteria. Take note about that all data files (d*) are plain text, no scape sequences are included.

Rgds.