Setting print queue priorities

System Administration Guide
Chapter 4, Managing printers and print jobs

The print service provides a simple priority mechanism that allows users to adjust the position of a print job in the queue. When users submit print jobs with lp(C), they can assign a ``priority level'' of between 0 and 39 to the print jobs. A lower number indicates a higher priority. Requests with higher priority are placed ahead of print jobs with lower priority. See ``Setting the priority level for a print job''.

To ensure that the priority scheme works, root or the lp administrator controls how high users can set the priority by:

assigning each user a priority limit.
Users cannot submit print jobs with a priority higher than their individual limit (users can submit jobs with lower priority levels).
assigning a default priority limit for the users not assigned a personal limit.
This limits the priority that users who do not have a personal priority limit can set.
setting a default priority level for the print service.
This priority is assigned to print jobs to which the user does not assign a priority.

By setting the characteristics according to your needs, you can prevent lower priority printing tasks (such as regular printing by most staff members) from interfering with higher priority printing tasks (such as payroll check printing by the accounting staff).

To list the current default priority level and priority limits, enter:

/usr/lib/lpusers -l

If you have not set any priority limits or defaults, you see:

   Default priority: 20
   Priority limit for users not listed below: 0
   Priority  Users

If you set the priority limit for steve and naomi to 10, when you list the priority level and limits, you see:

   Default priority: 20
   Priority limit for users not listed below: 0
   Priority  Users
      10     steve,naomi