Printing Facilities in Department

Back to Technical FAQ

The student printers are located in the Graduate PC Lab, room 1239. The printer names are publaser1d for double-sided output, which you should use whenever possible, and publaser1 for single sided output. You can print to these printers from the PCs in the lab.

The primary department public printer for general use is located in room 1435. The queue names are qmsd for double sided output, and qms for single sided output. The color printer located in this room is restricted for Faculty use. There is also a printer in room 2440 with a queue name of ps2440.

The printers ONLY accept PostScript as input. We have a number of filters which you can use to go from any type input to PostScript:

• mpage can turn text into postscript (/usr/local/bin/mpage)
• dvips turns latex output into postscript (/usr/local/bin/dvips)
• ghostscript converts some things to postscript (/usr/local/bin/gs)
• groff turns troff into postscript (/usr/local/bin/groff)
• enscript turns ascii to PS (and a few other things) (/usr/local/bin/enscript)
• pdftops turns PDF to postscript (/usr/local/bin/pdftops)

The utilities mpage and enscript can also be used to print multiple pages on one sheet of output. See the online man pages for more options.

Some useful commands:
lpr -Pprinter_name postscript_file_name
lpstat -o printer_name to see your job in the queue
mpage | enscript -Pprinter_name text_file_name
mpage | enscript -4 -Pprinter_name filename for multiple pages

A few useful hints:
If the printer in room 1435 reports a paper jam, it may simply be out of paper. Slide out the tray at the bottom and refill with paper. Make sure paper is not curled or damaged. Lift the top of the printer and reclose it to clear the paper jam notice.

If it says load A4 paper (European paper format) you will need to hit the shift button (purple letters) and continue button (also purple letters) between each page.