How the Solaris Printing Software Locates Printers

The following figure highlights the part of the print process in which the printing software checks a hierarchy of printer configuration resources to determine where to send the print request.

Figure 2–2 How the Print Client Software Locates Printers

1. A user submits a print request from a print client by using the lp or lpr command. The user can specify a destination printer name or class in any of three styles:

   • Atomic style, which is the lp command and option, followed by the printer name or class, as shown in this example:

     % lp -d neptune filename

   • POSIX style, which is the print command and option, followed by server:printer, as shown in this example:

     % lpr -P galaxy:neptune filename

   • Context-based style, as shown in this example:

     % lpr -d thisdept/service/printer/printer-name filename

2. The print command locates a printer and printer configuration information as follows:

   • The print command checks to see if the user specified a destination printer name or printer class in one of the three valid styles.

   • If the user didn't specify a printer name or class in a valid style, the command checks the user's PRINTER or LPDEST environment variable for a default printer name.

   • If neither environment variable for the default printer is defined, the command checks the sources configured for the printers database in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. The naming service sources might be one of the following:

     • LDAP directory information tree in the domain's ou=printers container

     • NIS printers.conf.byname map

     • NIS+ printers.conf_dir map