Jobs submitted with no destination named are coming out on the wrong printer. Which command reports which destination CUPS currently treats as the default?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 108. Essential system services medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct lpstat -d
Correct. -d shows the current default destination, that is, the one a job gets when neither lp -d nor lpr -P names a printer.
Not correct lpstat -p
Wrong. -p lists every printer with its state, whether idle, printing or disabled, and the reason for a disabled state. It does not mark which one is the default.
Not correct lpstat -a
Wrong. -a reports whether each destination is accepting requests, which is the queue-level accept or reject state. That is unrelated to which destination is chosen by default.
Not correct lpoptions -d
Wrong, and it changes things. lpoptions -d printer sets the calling user's default destination, writing it to ~/.cups/lpoptions. It is the command that creates the override, not the one that reports the system default.
Why
The destination for an unqualified job is resolved in order: the LPDEST or PRINTER environment variable, then the user's own default in ~/.cups/lpoptions, then the server default set with lpadmin -d. lpstat -d prints the destination that resolution currently arrives at, which is why it is the command to run when jobs surface on the wrong printer; lpstat -t includes the same line as part of a full status dump. Note that lpoptions -d is the command that sets a personal default, and a stale one is the usual reason a single user's jobs go astray while everyone else's are fine.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page lpstat(1)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 108 and space the ones you get wrong.
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