chkprintcap(8)

chkprintcap8

Check validity of entries in the print spooler database

Usage

chkprintcap [-d] [-f printcap]

Deprecation notice

This facility is scheduled for removal prior to the release of FreeBSD 16.0.

Overview

The chkprintcap utility scans a printcap(5) database (named by the printcap argument, or by default /etc/printcap), looking for entries which are invalid in one way or another. The following checks are currently implemented:

  1. ‘tc=’ references were properly expanded

  2. ‘tc=’ references did not form a loop

  3. No two printers share the same spool directory ‘(sd=’ capability).

The chkprintcap utility exits with a status equal to the number of errors encountered before processing stopped. (In some cases, processing can stop before the entire file is scanned.)

If the -d flag is given, chkprintcap will attempt to create any missing spool directories, giving them ‘u=rwx,go=rx’ (0755) mode, group ‘daemon’, and the owner specified by the ‘du=’ capability in the database (default 1, which corresponds to user ‘daemon’).

Releases

77 releases since FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE; the text changed 42 times.

  1. 3.0–3.2
  2. 3.3–3.5.1
  3. 4.0–4.2
  4. 4.3
  5. 4.4–4.6.2
  6. 4.7–4.11
  7. 5.0–5.2.1
  8. 5.3–6.3
  9. 6.4
  10. 7.0
  11. 7.1
  12. 7.2
  13. 7.3
  14. 7.4
  15. 8.0
  16. 8.1
  17. 8.2
  18. 8.3
  19. 8.4
  20. 9.0
  21. 9.1
  22. 9.2
  23. 9.3
  24. 10.0
  25. 10.1
  26. 10.2
  27. 10.3
  28. 10.4
  29. 11.0
  30. 11.1
  31. 11.2
  32. 11.3
  33. 11.4
  34. 12.0
  35. 12.1
  36. 12.2
  37. 12.3
  38. 12.4
  39. 13.0–13.2
  40. 13.3–14.4
  41. 14.5
  42. 15.0
  43. 15.1–16.0

Authors

The chkprintcap utility was written by Garrett A. Wollman ⟨[email protected]⟩.

Bugs

Not enough sanity-checking is done. At a minimum, the ownership and mode of the spool directories should also be checked. Other parameters whose value could cause lpd(8) to fail should be diagnosed.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.