wiki/ cipPools/ Printing

Printing

In order to print you have to

Below you can find detailed descriptions for these steps.

For scanning, follow the steps outlined next to each scanner.

Your balance

While you're graphically logged in you can check your balance online or with pr_acct in the terminal . If you're logged in by remote request a Kerberos ticket with kinit first.

You can charge the printing account at the office of the department for computer science in 02.155-113 (opposite to the CIP2) every Tuesday between 14:00 and 16:00.

Printing Costs

Each user has their own printing account at the CIP-Pool. The costs for printing are as follows:

Color Single-Sided Double-Sided
black-and-white 3 cent 4 cent
color 7 cent 13 cent

List of Devices

Device name Type Modes Room
ps1acip black/white printer, scanner duplex, tumble 01.155-113
ps2acip black/white printer, scanner duplex, tumble 02.135-113
ps2ccip color printer, scanner duplex, tumble, black/white 02.151-113

Further printers and scanners can be found in the library Technische Zweigbibliothek. We do not operate those.

Modes

In order to print black/white on a color printer, append the letters bw to the printer name.

By default, only the front side of a sheet is used. To print in duplex mode, append a d to the printer name.

Tumble mode (suffix t) also prints to both sides, but also rotates the rear page. Use this for documents in landscape orientation.

Some modes can be stacked, for example to print in black/white and duplex on ps2ccip (a color printer), use ps2ccipbwd as the printer name.

Do it

To print the file script.pdf at printer ps2ccip use the following shell command: lpr -Pps2ccip script.pdf

To print from a document viewer, open the printing dialog and insert lpr -Pps2ccip into the Command Line field.

Problems

How to test if printer is available? How to check a printer's printing queue?

You can query the printer queue with the command: lpq -P<printer> after replacing <printer> by the printer name as described above. (example: lpq -Pps2ccip).

How to print/delete print jobs?

The easiest way to remove all printing jobs started by you on the current hostname is by running the following command from your terminal: lprm -a all

The printer says "Papierstau" and refuses to do anything.

Please don't fumble with the device and ignore the instructions of the printer and instead contact us.

I have sent a document to the printer but nothing happens.

Probably your job or the one of another user, has caused a malfunction of the printer or the printer system (e.g. paper jam). Such problems may result from miscreated documents or any other paper format than Din A4. In this case the job should be deleted from the printer queue. Otherwise it might happen that the job is printed after solving the problem and the credits are debited of the printing account. The command lpq -P <printer> shows the printer queue with all jobs and their job numbers. A job can be removed from this queue with lprm -P <printer> <job>

Credit has been debited of my printer account without printing anything.

Likely the job was printed long time after sending it. (see section above)

I tried to print duplex but only one site in simplex was printed.

This is usually the result of a wrong paper format, make sure to choose A4.

Why does my printout look weird?

There are several common reasons for broken printouts, but unfortunately there is no simple common way to avoid them. Wrong fonts, overlapping, mis-positioned Glyphs or overlong lines are mostly due to missing fonts in a PDF file. This problem can best be avoided by generating the PDF-Files with the option 'PDF/A' or 'PDF for archiving' selected. When using TeX, try pdflatex instead of ps2pdf. When printing slides, often the function to print 2, 4 or 8 slides on a page is misbehaving. We recommend using pdfnup instead of psnup or the KDE printing dialog (which uses the broken psnup internally). Generally best results are accomplished by printing or converting files using acroread.