Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 5, 2026

Berkeley printing system

The Berkeley printing system is one of several standard architectures for printing on the Unix platform. It originated in 2.10BSD, and is still used to varying degrees in BSD derivatives such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. A system running this print architecture could traditionally be identified by the use of the user command lpr as the primary interface to the print system, as opposed to the System V printing system lp command.

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The Berkeley printing system is one of several standard architectures for printing on the Unix platform.1 It originated in 2.10BSD, and is still used to varying degrees in BSD derivatives such as FreeBSD,23 NetBSD,4 OpenBSD,5 and DragonFly BSD.67 A system running this print architecture could traditionally be identified by the use of the user command lpr as the primary interface to the print system, as opposed to the System V printing system lp command.189

Typical user commands available to the Berkeley print system are:

  • lpr — the user command to assign a job to the print queue18
  • lpq — shows the current print queue18
  • lprm — deletes a job from the print queue18

The lpd program is the daemon with which those programs communicate.1

These programs support the line printer daemon protocol, so that other machines on a network can submit jobs to a print queue on a machine running the Berkeley printing system, and so that the Berkeley printing system user commands can submit jobs to machines that support that protocol.110

References

References

  1. BSD vs. System V Printing (PDF). Xerox Multifunction Devices. November 25, 2003. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  2. "LPR(1)". FreeBSD Manual Pages. The FreeBSD Project. June 6, 1993. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  3. "LPD(8)". FreeBSD Manual Pages. The FreeBSD Project. April 15, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  4. "Chapter 12. Printing, Part III. System configuration, administration and tuning". The NetBSD Guide. The NetBSD Foundation. 2025.
  5. "LPD(8)". OpenBSD manual page server. OpenBSD. June 17, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  6. "LPR(1)". DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages. Dragonfly BSD. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  7. "LPD(8)". DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages. Dragonfly BSD. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  8. Shah, Ankur (2008). "History of Printing in UNIX". CUPS Administrative Guide. Packt. ISBN 978-1847192585. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  9. Sanderson II, Steven P. (January 31, 2025). "Complete Guide to Linux Printing Commands: From Basic to Advanced". spsanderson.com. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  10. McLaughlin, Leo (August 1990). Line Printer Daemon Protocol. IETF. doi:10.17487/RFC1179. RFC 1179. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
See also

See also