[cups.general] Restricting use of a colour printer to black-and-white

[henri]

There may also be other ways to alter the PPD to make it black and  
white only. I am not a post script master but I have seen some of  
these people at work.

Having two queues available to the clients is a good idea. It is very  
simple protection.

If the users have administration control over their machines or are  
able to add print queues and you require greater security then  
PrintAgent : http://www.lucidsystems.org/pringingworks/printagent is  
able to authenticate specific users to a CUPS queue. PrintAgent is  
also able to interface with various directory systems for password  
credentials so that people will be granted or denied access based upon  
group membership for instance.

This kind of approach allows both queues to be installed on a single  
machine but will only allow someone who is allowed to print to print  
to the color queue.

Finally if the clients are *NIX based then, PrinterSetup is able to  
dynamically alter the queues based upon the user who is logging onto  
the system. So if a user is a certain group then they will have both  
color and black and white queues available in the print dialog box.  
Details on PrinterSetup is available from : http://www.lucidsystems.org/printingworks/printagent/

I hope this helps.


> > I'm wondering if and how I might use CUPS to restrict the use of a  
> colour
> > printer for certain users so that they can print only in black-and- 
> white.
> > The print dialogue boxes of certain operating systems and/or  
> application
> > programmes have a 'Black-and-white only' tick box, but that's  
> leaving the
> > authority to the user.
> >
> > The motivation here is to reduce the number of printers in a space  
> by
> > replacing two printers - a black-and-white-only printer and a colour
> > printer - with a single printer - a colour printer which prints  
> cheaply in
> > black-and-white - and yet to prevent some users from using the  
> relatively
> > expensive colour printing.
> >
> > Is there a means in CUPS of, first, configuring the filters so  
> that they
> > force full-colour jobs to print in black-and-white only and, second,
> > having a virtual printer for an existing printer which always does  
> such
> > forcing? I don't recall reading about any such explicit features.
> >
> > John A. Murdie
>
> It depends on what printer you are using.
> If the printer speaks PostScript natively, you could set up a second  
> CUPS
> queue pointing to the same physical printer for b/w-only printing  
> and edit
> this queue's PPD as follows:
>
> Insert the following snippet near the PPD's section denoting the  
> device
> capabilities (like printer memory etc.):
> ---snip---
> *JobPatchFile 1 : "% force printer to b/w only
> <</ProcessColorModel /DeviceGray>>setpagedevice
> "
> *End
> ---snip---
>
> After editing, restart CPS and print a CUPS test page to this
> queue.If the color wheel on the printed test page *does* only
> contain gray segments, this hack works; otherwise you need to
> look for another workaround.
>
> Helge
>