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| Newer page: | version 3 | Last edited on Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:45:01 am | by DanielLawson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 2 | Last edited on Sunday, June 13, 2004 11:28:40 pm | by DanielLawson | Revert |
@@ -15,11 +15,16 @@
----
!! Pykota
-I set up [PyKota|http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation] to do some simple accounting. Pykota is really a quota/billing system, but I don't care about quotas or billing, so just set
it up to give everyone large quotas and forget about it.
+I set up [PyKota|http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation] to do some simple accounting. Pykota is really a quota/billing system, but it can operate in quotaless mode if you use
+ edpykota --noquota $username
-Pykota handles
accounting in a couple
of possible
ways. It can do naive page counting
, if you pass
it PostScript. This isn't the best method, as it doesn't actually tell you how many pages were printed! It also has a couple of methods of asking the printer itself how many pages were printed. This
will only work with network-attached printers
, and only if the device attaching the printer to the network has some page accounting stuff itself (ie
, any HP Jetdirect card, or any printer at all with a network card
in it)
.
+Pykota will do
accounting in a number
of ways. At a basic level
, it will do software accounting
, and this can accurately account for postscript
, PCL5 and PDF format files. PCL6 is
in the works
.
-The first method involves an snmp poll of
the printer after the job finishes
, which inspects
the page counter. The second involves sending some
PJL or PS code
to the printer, to do the same thing
. Both of these are nicer than the naive method in that they account for the number of pages actually printed, however they rely on this cups/accounting server being the only machine that directly talks to the printers in question.
+If you don't trust software, or want to verify that all
the pages were printed and feel like asking your
printer, there are a few ways of doing things. The most obvious one for a network attached printer is to use an SNMP query and fetch
the page counter. Any HP printer with a JetDirect card, and (I think) any other printers with native network cards in them, will support this. If you have a printserver dongle, it may or may not support this option.
+
+
The second method
involves sending a
PJL or PS request
to the printer, and have it return its page count. This should work for any printer that supports this feature in either PJL or PS, regardless of your connection mechanism (USB, parallel, network)
.
Both of these are nicer than the naive method in that they account for the number of pages actually printed, however they rely on this cups/accounting server being the only machine that directly talks to the printers in question.
While a bit confusing at first, PyKota looks like a really good system. Its billing information is currently stored in SQL, so I can easily write scripts to generate custom reports. It also supports LDAP, which I might look into as it will tie in with my authentication system. It doesn't really seem suited for generating weekly usage reports, as it is more focussed as a quota/billing system, however it does keep job histories, so I might investigate using that information to generate periodical usage reports.
+
+The author of pykota found this page and corrected me on some mistakes :) -- DanielLawson
