[cups.general] page_log redirection

[Michael Sweet]

On Feb 24, 2011, at 11:33 PM, Dhritiman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In our lab, we have a HP Lasertjet printer connected to 1 machine (server) and it is shared with all other machines in the lab (clients). We wanted to have a
> simple page_log accounting scheme whereby we would have the number of pages
> printed by each user. The page_log file has all the info that we want. Unfortunately the page_log s are distributed. That is when a client machine
> issues a print command, then the page_log information is logged in the /var/log/cups/page_log file of the CLIENT machine rather than the server machine. This
> is a problem, as for accounting we would have to look at the logs in all the
> machines. We would rather have the logs in one machine (ie., the server machine),
> so that our accounting script can work on the page_log file on that machine only.

Make sure your client machines do not have local drivers (look in /etc/cups/ppd).

> Can cups be configured somehow, so that all the page_logs are logged in the
> server machine (where the printer is attached) ?

Yes, when you use browsing or local "raw" queues pointing at the server, all of the filtering (and thus all of the page logging) will happen on the server.

> ...
> P.S.: As a different question, does cups provide any other facility for page
> accounting apart from page_log file ?


There are several third-party add-ons for this (see http://www.cups.org/links.php) and you can also query CUPS directly to get the page counts and print options (although that requires you keep more job history...)

__________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair