If a printer is spewing pages of garbage, you can follow these steps to clear things up:

1. Pull the paper trays to prevent more paper from being wasted. Wait until the paper currently in the printer finishes printing before you proceed to prevent an internal paper jam.

2. Use the lpq command on any CS Sun machine to find out which print job is causing problems. If this is your print job, use the lprm command to remove it from the print queue. For example:

   	% lpq -Pps1
   	ps1 is ready and printing
   	Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)      Total Size
   	active  robh    795     file1        978497 bytes
   	1st     robh    796     file2        933028 bytes
   	% lprm -Pps1 795
   	ps1-795: cancelled
   	% lpq -Pps1
           ps1 is ready and printing
           Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)      Total Size
           active  robh    796     file2        933028 bytes
   	%
       

3. If the offending print job is not yours, you will not have permission to remove it from the print queue using lprm. However, you can use the lpkick command with the -cleartop argument to restart the printer and remove the top job in the queue in the process. For example:

   	% lpq -Pps1
   	ps1 is ready and printing
   	Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)      Total Size
   	active  robh    795     file1        978497 bytes
   	1st     robh    796     file2        933028 bytes
   	% lpkick -cleartop ps1
   	  ... lots of messages from lpkick here
   	% lpq -Pps1
           ps1 is ready and printing
           Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)      Total Size
           active  robh    796     file2        933028 bytes
   	%
       

   If you would rather remove all of the print jobs from the printer queue, you can use the -clearq argument to lpkick rather than -cleartop.

4. Once the offending print job or jobs have been cleared from the print queue, you should power cycle the printer to clear any memory of the old print job and reinsert the paper trays if they were removed.

[Return to the FAQ index]