Can't get quotas working

John madflyguy at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 24 09:31:59 PST 2008


I'm running a file and print server for a school lab which has about 60 computers. The server is a Ubuntu 7.10 server running cups and samba for the lab computers (all running xp pro). I do not have a domain controller setup, students do not need passwords to log into the lab computers (so all students log-in a "student" account with guest privileges).

Without any restrictions the students print too much garbage. What I am trying to do is have a simple, global restriction on print jobs, say 10 page limit per minute. I posted a thread on ubuntu forums, but did not receive any help. Please check out the thread there for my cupsd.conf file and smb.conf file; http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=664060

My printer.conf file has 2 printers, I manually tried editing the quota numbers there but it did not work. I also added the following lines in printer.conf before the 2 printers;

  lpdadmin -p lab_printer \
           -o job-quota-period=60 \
           -o job-page-limit=10

Any ideas? Is what I'm trying to do possible? If one student prints a 10 page job, and then seconds after his neighbor does too, will the second student's print job be denied? I read a few of the other quota threads in this forum, some people suggested pykota, printbill, and printquota. Any opinions on these? Any of them gui based? I'm by no means a linux expert so the simplest implementation of a print quota is preferred. Thanks for the help.

-John




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