For postscript files, there's a utility called psnup that does this; for /lusr/bin/psnup, the syntax is roughly: psnup -2 foo.ps | lpr -Plw# where lw# is the printer you want to print to. You can use other values to have different numbers of pages on a side, such as -4 or -6. If you want to trim off the margins of the source document when printing multiple pages per side, use psbind in place of psnup:
psbind -Plw# foo.ps For most documents, psbind works much better than psnup. It is especially helpful for documents produced by TeX or LaTeX, which usually have such large margins that psbind can put 2 pages on a side of a sheet of paper without shrinking the text at all. If the margins around the resulting document are too small, try --margin=6mm. Use --help or --manual for more information on psbind.
psbind doesn't appear to work for PDF files. In that case you can first convert your PDF file to Postscript using /lusr/gnu/bin/pdf2ps or by printing to a file from acroread. You can then use psbind to print your new Postscript file.
For text files, there's a command enscript that creates postscript files, which can be used in conjunction with psnup. By default, it sends the postscript file directly to the printer; you can fix that with the -p flag, so the complete command would look like this: enscript -p - foo.txt | psnup -2 | lpr -Plw#
This is outlined at http://www.cs.utexas.edu//facilities/documentation/using_lpr/
Give lpr the flag "-C1-sided". For example, lpr -C1-sided -Plw7 filename will print out the file "filename", single-sided, on the printer lw7.
A lot of information about printers, including location, is stored in the file /etc/printcap -- you can look there for the location of a specific printer. You can also run man printers for usage and location information about the public printers.
To find out which printers can be printed to ("public" printers), use the command ypmatch lw.pub machines For more information about the printers (location, usage, etc.) please run man printers
You can type "man printers" for information on how to use the printers, what the printer names are and how to refer to them, etc. The commands to use the printer are: lpr -Plw[printernumber] [yourfile] - prints "yourfile" to the named printer lpq -Plw[printernumber] - displays the current print queue for the named printer lprm -Plw[printernumber] [job ID] - removes the job with ID job-ID from the print queue for the named printer. Job ID's are found with 'lpq'.
Type 'lpq -Plw[printernumber]'. This will often display an error message such as "Out of paper" or "Paper jam". If one of these errors has occurred, correct it (put more paper in the printer or open it and clear the jam). If that doesn't fix the problem, or if no such problem is displayed, restart the printer daemon with the command /lusr/etc/restart_lw -Plw[printernumber] and see if that fixes it. If the printer seems to be hanging on a specific large job, try cancelling that job and restarting the printer daemon. If none of these steps clears the problem, submit a shopreq and describe the problems and the steps you've taken.
This will in large part depend upon the document format you are working with. A good starting place is the /lusr/ImageMagick/bin/display program--it can display almost anything including PS and PDF files, but is somewhat no-frills. For PostScript files, we recommend gv, run simply as gv filname.ps. For Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files, try acroread or xpdf. For TeX documents, try xdvi, run as xdvi filename. You may also be interested a web browser such as mozilla or opera for most other types of files--they will convert things like html and graphics into Postscript (automatically when you print via the File->Print menu).
