Accounting

[Kurt Pfeifle]

David del Campo wrote:
> Is there a known way to make CUPS do some accounting on the print jobs 
> it runs?
> There is no need for quoting or similar, just some way of keeping 
> record of who prints what in which printer. Low impact would be a plus
> (if I do not have to reinstall the current service to implement the
> accounting that would be good).

You've basically 2 options:

 (a) very lightweight accounting, as built into CUPS already.

 (b) very sophisticated, customizable accounting, provided by PyKota
     (released under GPLv2, and soon GPLv3)


>From what you say, (a) probably is good enough for you. Look for the file
'/var/log/cups/page_log' to see what was printed via your CUPS server in
the past.

The page_log format is described here:

   http://localhost:631/help/ref-page_log.html
And here is a Perl script that processes your page_log file and produces
some statistics and tables from it:

   http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/printanalyze/PrintAnalyzer

There is some more info about CUPS' builtin accounting here:

   http://localhost:631/help/accounting.html?TOPIC=Getting+Started&QUERY=

If you are interested in (b):  www.pykota.com

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany