MacOSX 10.3.5 need secure,authenticated printing - how?

Helge Blischke H.Blischke at srz-berlin.de
Thu Aug 12 05:12:49 PDT 2004


Dag Tore Antonsen wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I was wondering how we can get our students using labmachines to have a
> secure, "authenticated" way of printing, using for example a password
> protected smb-server?
> 
> Problem:
> The students have to pay for each printout. We need to make sure that it
> is this student that's doing the printout, and that it is in no way
> someone else. We need to authenticate the users before they are allowed
> to print.
> 
> Is this possible?
> 
> I've tried LPD-printing, which works well, but is not secure (it also
> allows "fake" users), and smb-printing. But to use the
> smb-printing/smb-server you have to authenticate when setting up the
> printer. This means that your username and password is kept in
> /etc/cups/printers.conf , and we don't want that. It also means that the
> bill for all printouts on that machine goes to the person configuring
> the printers. I've tried removing the username and password, but that
> leaves us the message of authentication error.
> 
> What we want:
> We need to have the user logging in on for example a MacOSX-machine to
> either be authenticated automatcially (via Active Directory or
> something), OR that it pops up a window, asking for username and
> password every time you print. We don't want to store anything about the
> user/password on the machine. Is it in someway possible to configure
> CUPS in this way?
> 
> Can anyone help?
> 
I can't tell much about MacOS X, but as for client workstations running
UNIXes (including Linux) or some Windows >= NT4, it should be sufficient
to do some kind of "trusted" login at the workstation (via WINS, NIS,
LDAP
or whatever). If the pair consisting of workstation and user name is
unique,
it sould be no problem to installe a suitable billing system with CUPS 
(the job attributes to digest being job-originating-host-name and
job-originating-user-name).

Or do I miss something?

Helge

-- 
H.Blischke at srz-berlin.de
H.Blischke at srz-berlin.com
H.Blischke at acm.org




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