On 2005-06-05, No_One <no_one@no_where.com> wrote:

> I ran into a problem the other day, instead of running the correct command I
> ran cat output /dev/lp0 no redirect. Natually nothing printed, however, now
> nothing else will print as well, I get an error message Device or resource
> busy. I can't get the resource un-busy.

"cat output /dev/lp0" when you are an ordinary user gives you the error
message "cat: /dev/lp0: Permission denied", unless you were naughty and
changed the permissions on /dev/lp0 or are logged in as root. If you
did, cat will try to cat the output from /dev/lp0 until the cows come
home, your shell prompt won't come back (unless you &'ed the command)
and /dev/lp0 will be so busy with cat you can't print. There's more
than one way to kill cat, but once you do that you can print. Why are
you catting the output file directly to the printer device? When your
printing is properly set up you can print a postscript file and get the
output you want using the lpr command. All this assumes you are working
at the linux prompt when you are printing. DOS doesn't come with a cat
command that I know about and I don't know what the consequences of
fooling with devices under DOSEMU are.

If you are pulling our legs you are doing a good job.