samba - Feb 2003 - Printer Passwords and Print Auditing

Hello to all you folks,

I've got TWO questions.

1) I've been trying to password the use of my two laser printers so that
printing has to be assisted by my computer attendant (we are losing too much
paper and toner to people clicking print five to ten times).  But, I have
not figured out how to force passwords on my samba printer (HP LJ1200
running under cupsd and samba).  Is it possible for me to require
administrator intervention?

2) I would like to have a page based audit of printing as well.  Does samba
support that?  I've also been curious to do a "pixel" based audit
whereby I
can estimate toner consumption.

Matthew Raymer

Hi,

Just wanted to know if any one has done this and if
so, observations?

I'm doing it via Samba file server key args;

security = domain
pasword server = *

This method allows single password database to be
ref'd.

Now, I feel that for performance reasons (time for
each client to auth), that it may be better to have a
copy and use dist (or whatever) to sync the
smbpaswd/passwd files up to a master or PDC.

I say this cuz I see an awful lotta Samba process's
running on the PDC.  Its also a home dir server which
I am moving to another Samba file server so that my
PDC is a "pure" auth point only.

Your thoughts?

BTW, I still like NFS better.  But I am working "very"
hard to learn Samba as well as I knew NFS as my bias
may be for familiarity reasons.  This Samba stuff
seems a bi#@h if you want to config it for a special
purpose production envs.

Bri-
PS  The virtual server section of the docs sux.  I'll
figure it out but man why does this have to be so time consuming?

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These both seem better left to the print subsystem.
> 1) I've been trying to password the use of my two laser 
> printers so that
> printing has to be assisted by my computer attendant (we are 
> losing too much
> paper and toner to people clicking print five to ten times).  
> But, I have
> not figured out how to force passwords on my samba printer (HP LJ1200
> running under cupsd and samba).  Is it possible for me to require
> administrator intervention?
Don't know about cups, but in LPRng there is a facility to have all jobs
that enter a queue held, and an administrator can release whichever
he/she chooses.  No doubt cups has something equivalent.  Also, some
printers support this kind of thing themselves (enter a 4 digit pin to
release a job, or somesuch).
> 2) I would like to have a page based audit of printing as 
> well.  Does samba
> support that?  I've also been curious to do a "pixel" based 
> audit whereby I
> can estimate toner consumption.
Again, this is probably better left to the print subsystem, which
handles accounting, etc.  I imagine you'd be looking at some kind of
filter to interpret the PCL (or whatever) data the user submitted, and
write the accounting info wherever you or cups want it.


~ Daniel










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