[ Previous | Next | Table of Contents | Index | Library Home |
Legal |
Search ]
Guide to Printers and Printing
The base operating system spooler
can be viewed as a process or a subsystem with a beginning, points-in-between,
and an ending. To accomplish its tasks, the base operating system
spooler has four basic parts:
- The enq
command is the true entry point to the spooler, and as such is the beginning
of any spooler activity. This command accepts requests for job
processing.
- The qdaemon
is responsible for accepting and tracking all jobs submitted to the spooler by
the enq command. It is also responsible, once all the
necessary resources are available, for allowing a queue backend to process a
job. The qdaemon is one of the points-in-between in the
spooler process.
- The spooler backend is a
collection of programs invoked by the spooler's qdaemon
command to process a job in some queue. The backend sends output to a
specific device, such as a printer. When the backend is
piobe, it involves a formatter filter, which in turn involves a
printer colon file. The backend is one of the points-in-between as well
as the ending, since the backend contains the specific process that will
deliver the processed job to its final destination.
- The configuration
file, /etc/qconfig, describes the configuration of available queues
and devices. Both the enq command and the qdaemon
command refer to the configuration file. This configuration file is
considered as conceptually important as the other three spooler parts due to
its critical value to the correct operation of the base operating system
spooler as a whole.
[ Previous | Next | Table of Contents | Index |
Library Home |
Legal |
Search ]