Retrieve the status of the printer

The user may read the actual printer status information by applying an LP client programme such as lpq (BSD style) or lpstat (System V style).

The printer status and spool queue can be displayed using the lpq command. The queue name attribute is ignored; all print jobs are shown. Print jobs that have been processed by the PDL interpreter are not in the spool queue anymore. These jobs are in the list of scheduled jobs or the list of waiting jobs.

The content of the printer spool queue is shown via lpq and is protocol independent. lpq shows jobs submitted via LPD but also jobs submitted with other protocols. The job name shown may differ depending on the submission protocol.

The first line of the generated message describes the system’s status.

The lpd standard does not define the output format, but there is a de-facto standard to which the implementation complies:

And when the verbose listing is requested using the “-l” option of lpq:

Here is an example of "lpq -l" execution showing a job with several files: