8.2.5 Displaying Printer Characteristics

If you want to see all of the characteristics for a printer, use the -p option together with the -l (long) option to lpstat. This command can be especially useful for finding the printer type and content type.

To show characteristics for all printers on a system, enter the following:

$ lpstat -p -l

A table shows all the configuration information that is used by the LP print service for each printer.

In the following example, all of the fields are blank except for the content type and the printer type of the printer pinecone.

$ lpstat -p pinecone -l
printer pinecone is idle. enabled since Wed Jan 2 18:20:22 PST
1991. available.
        Content types: PS
        Printer types: PS
        Description:
        Users allowed:
                (all)
        Forms allowed:
                (none)
        Banner not required
        Character sets:
                (none)
        Default pitch:
        Default page size:
$