lp printing to specific printer trays

[outdoor25]

Is there a way to print to send an lp command to a specific printer tray on RHEL 5 via command line? I've tried several ways and it won't print.

I'm trying to print a PDF file and dynamically tell it what tray to print too? I've tried several variations of this the lpr command, the lp command but nothing works.

Anyone been able to successfully get this to work? If so, please let me know. I've found no one yet that can do this. We have printers that have multiple letter trays (one for special paper and one for plain letter). I dynamically want to tell it what tray to print to, in order to print on the right type of paper. It by default wants to pick the plain letter all the time.

Thanks,
Chris

[outdoor25]

I tried an lpr -o tray1 -P printer_name filename.pdf. But it always prints to the same tray regardless of what I tell it.

[rcgreen]

This behavior is controlled by the printer itself. Some printers
can set up multiple queues that appear to clients as individual
printers. You send the job to different "printers" to print from
different trays. Check the documentation that came with the
printer.

[outdoor25]

So, what about those printers that have multiple letter trays? We use one of the trays fir special paper nd the other letter tray for plain paper. We print pdf files for some that I want to send to one tray and some to the other.

Are you saying that I have set up multiple the physical printer wih multiple queues, in order to make this work?

[rcgreen]

No, some printers will set up multiple virtual printers for this,
or the printer drivers they supply may provide this feature.

[downhill42]

I tried copying a printer and selecting a different tray inside the driver but it failed to print to that tray. It gives you the option for the trays but fails to print to them.

[outdoor25]

downhill42 and I are working together on this one. It seems like it wants will handle media types for legal and letter but won't when you specify a paper tray. We are using an HP Laserjet 8150 PostScript printer. But we have several different types of printers that we have to get to work.

Wondered if others maybe had an alternative solution to get around this.