NAME

lprm —

remove jobs from the line printer spooling queue

SYNOPSIS

lprm [-Pprinter] [-] [job # ...] [user ...]

DESCRIPTION

The lprm utility will remove a job, or jobs, from a printer's spool queue. Since the spooling directory is protected from users, using lprm is normally the only method by which a user may remove a job. The owner of a job is determined by the user's login name and host name on the machine where the lpr(1) command was invoked.

Options and arguments:

-Pprinter

Specify the queue associated with a specific printer (otherwise the default printer is used).

-

If a single ‘-’ is given, lprm will remove all jobs which a user owns. If the super-user employs this flag, the spool queue will be emptied entirely.

user

Cause lprm to attempt to remove any jobs queued belonging to that user (or users). This form of invoking lprm is useful only to the super-user.

job #

A user may dequeue an individual job by specifying its job number. This number may be obtained from the lpq(1) program, e.g.

% lpq -l

1st:ken				[job #013ucbarpa]
	(standard input)	100 bytes
% lprm 13

If neither arguments or options are given, lprm will delete the currently active job if it is owned by the user who invoked lprm.

The lprm utility announces the names of any files it removes and is silent if there are no jobs in the queue which match the request list.

The lprm utility will kill off an active daemon, if necessary, before removing any spooling files. If a daemon is killed, a new one is automatically restarted upon completion of file removals.

ENVIRONMENT

If the following environment variable exists, it is utilized by lprm.

PRINTER: If the environment variable PRINTER exists, and a printer has not been specified with the -P option, the default printer is assumed from PRINTER.

FILES

/etc/printcap: Printer characteristics file.
/var/spool/*: Spooling directories.
/var/spool/*/lock: Lock file used to obtain the pid of the current daemon and the job number of the currently active job.

DIAGNOSTICS

``Permission denied" if the user tries to remove files other than his own.

HISTORY

The lprm command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BUGS

Since there are race conditions possible in the update of the lock file, the currently active job may be incorrectly identified.