[SUSPECT-HEADER] - [cups.general] Re: MacOSX 10.3.5 need secure,authenticated printing - how? - Email found in subject

[John C. Welch]

On 8/12/04 7:12 AM, "Helge Blischke" <H.Blischke at srz-berlin.de> 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).

The only way you might get this to work is to user personal certs and SSL.

john

-- 
John C. Welch
CIS 
johnwelch at kclife.com
(816) 753-7299 x8473