Remote printing

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Remote printing allows different computers to share printers.

To use remote printing facilities, the computers must be connected through the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and must support the required TCP/IP applications, such as the lpd daemon.

A remote print request is queued in the same manner as a local print request:

  • A front-end print command such as qprt, lpr, or enq initiates the request to the appropriate queue on the local system.
  • The qdaemon on the local system processes the request as it would any locally queued job, with one exception: the qdaemon passes the request to the rembak backend program rather than the piobe backend.
  • The rembak program transmits the print job to a remote server over the TCP/IP network.
  • On the remote server, the lpd daemon monitors port 515 for remote print requests.
  • When the lpd receives a remote print request, it places the job in the appropriate local queue.
  • The print request is then processed by the qdaemon on the print server.
  • The qdaemon passes the request to the piobe backend on the print server.
  • The piobe backend formats the data stream for printing on the specified printer.

The following sections discuss how to configure, use and manage a remote printing environment: