Printing Banner Pages

A banner page identifies who submitted the print request, the print request ID, and when the request was printed. A banner page can also have an optional title that the requester can use to better identify a printout.

Banner pages make identifying the owner of a print job easy, especially when many users submit jobs to the same printer. Printing banner pages uses more paper, however, and may not be necessary if a printer has only a few users. In some cases, printing banner pages is undesirable. For example, if a printer has special paper or forms mounted, like paycheck forms, printing banner pages may cause problems.

By default, the print service forces banner pages to be printed. However, you can give users a choice to turn off printing of a banner page when they submit a print request. You can set this choice through the lpadmin command or through Printer Manager. If you give the users a choice, they have to use the -o nobanner option to turn off printing of a banner page.

Also, you can turn off banner pages on a printer so banner pages are never printed. This is important if you have a situation where you don't need or want banner pages. You can turn off banner page printing by using the command-line interface only. For step-by-step command-line instructions, see the System Administration Guide, Volume II, in the Solaris 2.5 System Administration AnswerBook.