doc/help/accounting.html

   1 <HTML>
   2 <!-- SECTION: Getting Started -->
   3 <HEAD>
   4         <TITLE>Printer Accounting Basics</TITLE>
   5 </HEAD>
   6 <BODY>
   7
   8 <P>CUPS supports a variety of printer accounting schemes. Aside from the
   9 built-in <A HREF="#QUOTAS">quota</A> and <A HREF="#PAGELOG">page logging</A>
  10 support, there are several third-party solutions that can be found on
  11 <A HREF="http://www.cups.org/">www.cups.org</A>.</P>
  12
  13
  14 <H2 CLASS="title"><A NAME="QUOTAS">Quota Support</A></H2>
  15
  16 <P>CUPS supports page and size-based quotas for each printer.
  17 The quotas are tracked individually for each user, but a single set of
  18 limits applies to all users for a partiuclar printer. For example, you
  19 can limit every user to 5 pages per day on an expensive printer, but
  20 you cannot limit every user except Johnny.</P>
  21
  22 <P>The <CODE>job-k-limit</CODE>, <CODE>job-page-limit</CODE>, and <CODE>job-quota-peiod</CODE>
  23 options determine whether and how quotas are enforced for a printer.
  24 The <CODE>job-quota-period</CODE> option determines the time interval for
  25 quota tracking. The interval is expressed in seconds, so a day is
  26 86,400, a week is 604,800 and a month is 2,592,000 seconds. The
  27 <CODE>job-k-limit</CODE> option specifies the job size limit in killobytes. The
  28 <CODE>job-page-limit</CODE> option specifies the number of pages limit.</P>
  29
  30 <P>For quotas to be enforced, the period and at least one of the limits
  31 must be set to a non-zero value. The following options will enable
  32 weekly quotas with the given size and page count limits:</P>
  33
  34 <PRE CLASS="command">
  35 <KBD>/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p <I>printer</I> -o job-quota-period=604800 \
  36     -o job-k-limit=1024 ENTER</KBD>
  37 <KBD>/usr/sbin/lpadmin -p <I>printer</I> -o job-quota-period=604800 \
  38     -o job-page-limit=100 ENTER</KBD>
  39 </PRE>
  40
  41 <P>Or, you can combine all three options on the same line.</P>
  42
  43 <P>While there is no way to query the current quota state for a particular
  44 user, any application can request a list of jobs for a user and printer that
  45 can be used to easily determine that information.</P>
  46
  47
  48 <H2 CLASS="title"><A NAME="PAGELOG">Page Logging</A></H2>
  49
  50 <P>CUPS logs every page that is printed on a system to the
  51 <VAR><A HREF="ref-page_log.html">page_log</A></VAR> file. Page logging
  52 is only available for drivers that provide page accounting information,
  53 typically all PostScript and CUPS raster devices. Raw queues and queues
  54 using third-party solutions such as Foomatic generally do not have
  55 useful page accounting information available.</P>
  56
  57
  58 </BODY>
  59 </HTML>