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In the case of a network printer, try printing from another host. If the printer is reachable from your own host (see Chapter 10 for the ping utility), you may try to put the formatted file on it, like file.ps in case of a PostScript printer, using an FTP client. If that works, your print system is misconfigured. If it doesn't work, maybe the printer doesn't understand the format you are feeding it.

The GNU/Linux Printing site contains more tips and tricks.

8.4. Summary

The Linux print service comes with a set of printing tools based on the standard UNIX LPD tools, whether it be the SystemV or BSD implementation. Below is a list of print-related commands.

Table 8-1. New commands in chapter 8: Printing

8.5. Exercises

Configuring and testing printers involves being in the possession of one, and having access to the root

account. If so, you may try:

• Installing the printer using the GUI on your system.

• Printing a test page using the GUI.

• Printing a test page using the lp command.

• Print from within an application, for example Mozilla or OpenOffice, by choosing File->Print from the menu.

• Disconnect the printer from the network or the local machine/print-server. What happens when you try to print something?

The following exercises can be done without printer or root access.

• Try to make PostScript files from different source files, (e.g. HTML, PDF, man pages). Test the results with the gv viewer.

• Check that the print daemon is running.

• Print the files anyway. What happens?

• Make a PostScript file using Mozilla. Test it with gv.

• Convert it to PDF format. Test with xpdf.

• How would you go about printing a GIF file from the command line?

• Use a2ps to print the /etc/profile file to an output file. Test again with gv. What happens if you don't specify an output file?

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