Printing
DESY provides a set of public printers to which you can send your print jobs. Printers are managed with the LPRng Printing System – CUPS is only available under Scientific Linux 5. Use the command lpr to submit a print job, lpq to inspect the status of the job queue, and lprm to remove a job from the queue if it is still waiting (NOTE: for Scientific Linux 5, the commands are slpr, slpq and slprm). Note that all public printers are PostScript printers. The printer spooler is smart enough to process certain other kinds of input (e. g. gzip-compressed PostScript will be uncompressed, or plain text will get a simple page header), but it cannot understand arbitrary data. You should always use the according application to print out documents other than plain PostScript.
Poster printing: You can print posters on the pubcp4a0 printer in the UCO rooms. There is a detailed description of the printer: HP DesignJet T7100 Color Printer.
When printing from Linux and Acrobat reader (or most other programs) you will get too dark, blueish colors. Here the trick is to use pdftops on SL6 and convert it to postscript first (for example on pal-sld6). If you want to print a test version on A3 and can't find a program that lets you scale a ps while printing, create an A3 version of your poster using the switch "-paper A3" for pdftops. Another option is to ask a colleague who has a Mac, since Macs have a good build-in color management. From Windows, there is so far no known way to print PDFs in good colors.As a member of FLC, you will usually want to print on flcps3,flcps4 (black/white) or flccp4 (colour). If you need to print on DINA3 paper, append "a3" to the printer name: flcps3a3 or flccp4a3. Both printers are located in O1.534 - "Bürotechnik" (on our floor in bldg. 1E).
If you have a large print job, you shouldn't block the group printers for a longer amount of time, but instead use pubps2 (black/white) or pubcp1 (colour) instead. Posters in A0 format can be printed on pubcp4a0. Those printers are located behind the UCO (building 2b, room 131, ground floor) and actually consist of three resp. two separate machines. To select a different printer, use the option “-Pprinter_name” of lpr and related commands. The default setting can be changed with the environment variable “PRINTER”.
Most printers have a duplex unit and will give you two-sided printouts by default. Append an “s” to the printer name to force single-sided printing. Also the option "-Zsimplex" should work for single sided printing. You may append another paper format to the name if the printer supports it, e. g. pubcp1a3. Many printers can also print on transparencies instead of paper if you append a “t” to the printer name (transparencies will always be single-sided, for good reasons).
- Your printouts will have a colored cover sheet which bears your username and the name of the host from which you submitted the job. If you cannot find your printout in the output tray of the printer, have a look at the labeled shelves which should be close to every public printer.
If there are problems with the printer (e. g. empty toner) you can call the UCO or send a mail to the printer service (print.service@desy.de).