[cups.general] Print Accounting

Dan Tappin dan at orourke.ca
Thu Mar 24 11:51:28 PST 2005


I am looking for a print accounting system and have been pointed at 
CUPS more than a few times.

I run a small Windows (98, 2000 & XP) based office and we have a Xserve 
running OS X as a SMB fileserver.  Now the Xserve is already running 
CUPS and I have been looking at running all the various stand alone 
networked printers through the Xserve and CUPS.

The one issue that I can't seem to resolve is print accounting.  In the 
ideal world every print job would require a client code i.e. no code no 
printing.  On my OS X Power book the print driver for default printer 
(a HP 4050) has a billing info field.  This does not seem to exist on 
the other Windows drivers in the office.

If I run the printers though the Xserve and CUPS I see from the docs 
that I can log billing info... I am just at a loss as how to have the 
users enter this and force the billing info to be entered on all (or 
selected) printers.  Do I need custom printer drivers?

Thanks,

Dan





More information about the cups mailing list