setting up a dummy printer

[Unix Administrator_5]

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.

[Mark Grant · Accepted solution]

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

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

or something very similar :)

[Unix Administrator_5]

can i use hippi to do this?

[Mark Grant]

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.

[doug mielke]

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.

[Unix Administrator_5]

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.

[doug mielke]

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

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

[doug mielke]

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?

[Unix Administrator_5]

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

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