[OS X TeX] OT: Location of print spool files

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Sat Jun 10 18:45:18 EDT 2006


Le 11 juin 06 à 00:17, Peter Dyballa a écrit :

> Am 10.06.2006 um 23:41 schrieb Bruno Voisin:
>
>> does anybody know where print spool files reside on OS X
>
> This question is easy to answer: (/private)/var/spool/cups and (/ 
> private)/var/spool/cups/tmp. Adobe Reader: I don't know exactly.  
> You could use lsof (ls i.e. list open files) on the command line  
> like 'lsof | grep -i adobe' -- it can take a minute!

Apparently the problem took care of itself: after writing that  
message and then asking TeXShop to print a couple of normal files, I  
moved away from the computer and whaoo: when I'm back I can see that  
there are again 1.3 GB free on the computer. Apparently printing  
files without Adobe Reader and without any size problem did clean the  
spool directories (if that was indeed the problem).

> You do not need to log-in as root -- have you forgotten sudo?

I had tried this, but without success:

legimc11:brunovoisin brunovoisin$ cd /var/spool
legimc11:spool brunovoisin$ ls -l
total 0
drwxrwxrwx     3 nobody  nobody    102 Feb 21 18:23 PDFMaker
drwx--x---   505 root    lp      17170 Jun 11 00:03 cups
drwxr-x---     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 21  2005 fax
drwxr-x---     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 23  2005 mqueue
drwxr-xr-x    16 root    wheel     544 Mar 21  2005 postfix
drwxrwxrwx     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 24  2005 samba
legimc11:spool brunovoisin$ sudo cd cups
Password:
legimc11:spool brunovoisin$ ls -l
total 0
drwxrwxrwx     3 nobody  nobody    102 Feb 21 18:23 PDFMaker
drwx--x---   505 root    lp      17170 Jun 11 00:03 cups
drwxr-x---     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 21  2005 fax
drwxr-x---     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 23  2005 mqueue
drwxr-xr-x    16 root    wheel     544 Mar 21  2005 postfix
drwxrwxrwx     2 root    wheel      68 Mar 24  2005 samba

Did I make a basic error of syntax, or is it the "lp" owner of the  
cups directory that is impervious to sudo? (The nonstandard prompt  
above comes from experimenting with a ~/.bashrc containing "if [ -n  
"$PS1" ]; then PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '; fi", a tip given last year by Adam  
Maxwell IIRC to get a shorter prompt by printing the last directory  
of the path only).

> And there is something easier: Print Center. Doesn't it show  
> unfinished jobs? On the command line you, as the responsible for  
> wasting so much disk space, can invoke lpq (line printer queue) to  
> show what is queued in the default printer's queue. The list has  
> numbers, print jobs, in the first column. lprm <this job number(s)>  
> removes them.
>
> If this civilised action fails, you can open http://localhost:631/  
> and see what you can arrange. If this fails, there is still Bruce  
> Forte's method of removing files from the above mentioned  
> locations! Doing this you should first halt the printer's queue in  
> Print Center and afterwards enable it again.

I'm not sure that would work, as the crash occurred before the  
printer queue was launched: it was as Adobe Reader was processing  
(apparently) the PDF file to create the print job.

I'm not sure my analysis of the problem is correct. In any case,  
sorry for the bandwidth waste. That kind of problem has a tendency to  
occur on late nights, when in last-minute panic (I'm leaving tomorrow  
for a summer school, then back for a couple of days, then away again  
at a conference until the end of the month, and I need to be able to  
use my PowerBook for work on the go all along).

Many thanks in any case,

Bruno------------------------- Info --------------------------
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