Summary

As a system administrator, the majority of system problems I respond to are printer related. I could spend a great deal of time describing how to configure and troubleshoot the LP print service. I could explore a more in-depth discussion on configuring printer filters, creating terminfo databases, and troubleshooting printing problems, but that's beyond the scope of this book. To be prepared for the certification exam and basic system administration, you need to understand the basics of the LP print service, including the print spooler, print daemons, and printer configuration files. Also, you need to know where the printer related files and programs are stored in the Solaris 10 directory structure.

In addition to understanding the LP print service, you need to know how to use all the utilities and programs that are available to manage the LP print service. You need to know how to start and stop the print service and how to enable or disable it using all the methods described in this chapter.

You should also become familiar with third-party applications and how they prepare print jobs to be sent to the spooler. Many of the problems you may encounter are not with the Solaris print service but have to do with the way that the application formats the print job. This chapter introduces you to the Solaris print system and the lpsched daemon. For a more detailed discussion of the lpsched daemon, refer to Solaris 10 System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration, from Sun Microsystems.