root / pykota / trunk / README @ 769

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1# $Id$
2
3PyKota - Print Quota for CUPS
4
5(c) 2003 Jerome Alet <alet@librelogiciel.com>
6You're welcome to redistribute this software under the
7terms of the GNU General Public Licence version 2.0
8or, at your option, any higher version.
9
10You can read the complete GNU GPL in the file COPYING
11which should come along with this software, or visit
12the Free Software Foundation's WEB site http://www.fsf.org
13
14====================================================================
15
16READ SPECIAL LICENSING AND REDISTRBUTION TERMS IN THE FILE 'LICENSE'
17
18====================================================================
19
20PyKota is a complete Print Quota system for the Common Unix Printing
21System (aka CUPS), which works by directly querying the printers
22for the number of pages they have printed.
23
24Actual working features :
25
26        - Per printer user quotas.
27       
28        - Automated email warning of users above quota to the
29          user himself and to the print quota administrator.
30       
31        - CUPS filter for quota accounting : pykota
32       
33        - Command line print quota editor : edpykota
34       
35        - Command line print quota report generator : repykota
36       
37        - Command line print quota automated warning sender : warnpykota
38       
39        - Command line tools mimic the disk quota utilities for
40          easier mastering.
41       
42        - Centralized storage of quotas : you can manage quotas for
43          different printers on different print servers and store them all
44          on the same quota storage server.
45          WARNING : actually all your printers must have an unique name,
46                    but this may change in a future version.
47                   
48        - SNMP querying of any networked SNMP-enabled printer. More
49          querying methods will be implemented soon.
50       
51        - Special scripts included for a seamless integration of
52          PyKota on Debian machines.
53         
54All the command line tools accept the -h | --help command line option
55which prints all the available options and show usage examples.
56       
57Planned features are described in the TODO file.
58
59Actually only the lazy quota method is implemented. What do I call
60lazy method ?
61
62  The lazy method consists in querying the printer (actually via SNMP)
63  for its total pages counter, just before the beginning of a job, and
64  use this to modify the *preceding* user's quota. So you're
65  always late of one print job, but this is generally ok, especially
66  because a check is also done to see if the current user is allowed
67  or not to print.
68 
69  Problem may arise however in batches on successive print jobs
70  by different users when there's no sleep time between two jobs :
71  the used pages may be attributed to incorrect user. This
72  depends on the printer speed and time between jobs.
73 
74  Other querying methods which won't suffer from this problem,
75  but probably from other ones ;-) will be implemented in the
76  future.
77 
78PyKota is known to work fine with HP Laserjet 2100 and 2200   
79networked printers, and should work with any SNMP-enabled
80network printer capable of outputing its lifetime printed pages
81number.
82
83============================================================
84
85INSTALLATION:
86=============
87
88Prerequisite :
89--------------
90   
91  You need to have the following tools installed on the CUPS Server :
92 
93    - CUPS
94    - Python
95    - eGenix' mxDateTime Python extension
96    - PostgreSQL's PygreSQL Python extension and the PostgreSQL client
97      libraries.
98    - SNMP tools (specifically the snmpget command)
99   
100  You need to have the following tools installed on the Quota Storage 
101  Server :
102 
103    - PostgreSQL
104   
105  PygreSQL and the PostgreSQL client libraries's versions on the CUPS
106  Server must match the PostgreSQL version used on the Quota Storage
107  Server.
108 
109  Of course the CUPS Server and the Quota Storage Server can be the 
110  very same machine.
111 
112  This list of prerequisite software may change in the future, when
113  PyKota will support more functionnalities you will be given
114  alternatives.
115 
116Then :   
117------
118 
119Download the latest PyKota version from the CVS tree on :
120
121    http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pykota
122
123Just type :
124
125    python setup.py install
126
127You may need to be logged in with sufficient privileges (e.g. root)
128
129Go to the initscripts subdirectory of PyKota's sources, and choose
130the appropriate storage backend for your configuration. Read
131the associated README file and execute the initialization script
132to create an empty PyKota Storage.
133
134Copy the conf/pykota.conf.sample sample configuration file to
135CUPS' configuration directory, usually /etc/cups, under the
136name pykota.conf, and adapt this file to your own needs and
137configuration.
138
139Modify the PPD files for each printer on which you want to manage
140print quotas, for example /etc/cups/ppd/lp.ppd :
141
142--- Add the line below exactly as-is somewhere near the top ---
143*cupsFilter:  "application/vnd.cups-postscript 0 /usr/bin/pykota"
144--- Add the line above exactly as-is somewhere near the top  ---
145
146Modify the path to the pykota executable if needed, unfortunately
147you have to supply the correct absolute path here due to CUPS
148internals, or put the pykota executable into /usr/lib/cups/filter
149instead of into /usr/bin.
150
151Do this for each ppd file present in this directory if you want
152to enable quota on every printer.
153         
154Add printers and users to the quota system and set their quota values :
155
156    $ edpykota --add -P printer -S softlimit -H hardlimit user1 ... userN
157       
158    launching edpykota without any argument or with the --help
159    command line option will show you all the possibilities.
160
161Restart CUPS, for example under Debian GNU/Linux systems :         
162
163    $ /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
164       
165Your users now should be able to print but not exceed their
166printing quota.
167
168WARNING : as of today, 2003-02-06, group quotas are not
169implemented.
170
171SECURITY : You should ensure that only the print quota administrator
172           can run the warnpykota command, but this is actually not
173           enforced in the program. Any user able to launch warnpykota
174           could flood over-quota users' email boxes.
175           
176           You should ensure that only the print quota administrator
177           can run the edpykota command, but this is actually not
178           enforced in the program. Any user could modify his/her
179           or other people's print quota.
180         
181           launching : chmod 750 /usr/bin/warnpykota /usr/bin/edpykota
182           should make you reasonably safe.
183           
184============================================================
185
186Please e-mail bugs to: alet@librelogiciel.com (Jerome Alet)
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