root / pykota / trunk / README @ 842

Revision 840, 7.1 kB (checked in by jalet, 22 years ago)

Some untested scripts added to help people who don't have
SNMP enabled printers.

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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.
49       
50        - External command querying of any printer : you can use
51          you own querying command, e.g. to query a printer via
52          the serial port, sending it a special PJL job and
53          reading the result. See the example scripts in the
54          "untested" directory and try to adapt them to your
55          configuration.
56       
57        - Special scripts included for a seamless integration of
58          PyKota on Debian machines.
59         
60All the command line tools accept the -h | --help command line option
61which prints all the available options and show usage examples.
62       
63Planned features are described in the TODO file.
64
65Actually only the lazy quota method is implemented. What do I call
66lazy method ?
67
68  The lazy method consists in querying the printer (actually via SNMP)
69  for its total pages counter, just before the beginning of a job, and
70  use this to modify the *preceding* user's quota. So you're
71  always late of one print job, but this is generally ok, especially
72  because a check is also done to see if the current user is allowed
73  or not to print.
74 
75  Problem may arise however in batches on successive print jobs
76  by different users when there's no sleep time between two jobs :
77  the used pages may be attributed to incorrect user. This
78  depends on the printer speed and time between jobs.
79 
80  Other querying methods which won't suffer from this problem,
81  but probably from other ones ;-) will be implemented in the
82  future.
83 
84PyKota is known to work fine with HP Laserjet 2100 and 2200   
85networked printers, and should work with any SNMP-enabled
86network printer capable of outputing its lifetime printed pages
87number.
88
89============================================================
90
91INSTALLATION:
92=============
93
94Prerequisite :
95--------------
96   
97  You need to have the following tools installed on the CUPS Server :
98 
99    - CUPS
100    - Python v2.1 or above
101    - eGenix' mxDateTime Python extension
102    - PostgreSQL's PygreSQL Python extension and the PostgreSQL client
103      libraries.
104    - SNMP tools (specifically the snmpget command)
105   
106  You need to have the following tools installed on the Quota Storage 
107  Server :
108 
109    - PostgreSQL
110   
111  PygreSQL and the PostgreSQL client libraries's versions on the CUPS
112  Server must match the PostgreSQL version used on the Quota Storage
113  Server.
114 
115  Of course the CUPS Server and the Quota Storage Server can be the 
116  very same machine.
117 
118  This list of prerequisite software may change in the future, when
119  PyKota will support more functionnalities you will be given
120  alternatives.
121 
122Then :   
123------
124 
125Download the latest PyKota version from the CVS tree on :
126
127    http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pykota
128
129Just type :
130
131    python setup.py install
132
133You may need to be logged in with sufficient privileges (e.g. root)
134
135Go to the initscripts subdirectory of PyKota's sources, and choose
136the appropriate storage backend for your configuration. Read
137the associated README file and execute the initialization script
138to create an empty PyKota Storage.
139
140Copy the conf/pykota.conf.sample sample configuration file to
141CUPS' configuration directory, usually /etc/cups, under the
142name pykota.conf, and adapt this file to your own needs and
143configuration.
144
145Modify the PPD files for each printer on which you want to manage
146print quotas, for example /etc/cups/ppd/lp.ppd :
147
148--- Add the line below exactly as-is somewhere near the top ---
149*cupsFilter:  "application/vnd.cups-postscript 0 /usr/bin/pykota"
150--- Add the line above exactly as-is somewhere near the top  ---
151
152Modify the path to the pykota executable if needed, unfortunately
153you have to supply the correct absolute path here due to CUPS
154internals, or put the pykota executable into /usr/lib/cups/filter
155instead of into /usr/bin.
156
157Do this for each ppd file present in this directory if you want
158to enable quota on every printer.
159         
160Add printers and users to the quota system and set their quota values :
161
162    $ edpykota --add -P printer -S softlimit -H hardlimit user1 ... userN
163       
164    launching edpykota without any argument or with the --help
165    command line option will show you all the possibilities.
166
167Restart CUPS, for example under Debian GNU/Linux systems :         
168
169    $ /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
170       
171Your users now should be able to print but not exceed their
172printing quota.
173
174To see printer command usage, you can use :
175
176    $ repykota --printer lp
177   
178or :
179
180    $ repykota
181   
182    which will print quota usage for all users on all printers,
183    along with totals.
184   
185WARNING : as of today, 2003-02-06, group quotas are not
186implemented.
187
188SECURITY : You should ensure that only the print quota administrator
189           can run the warnpykota command, but this is actually not
190           enforced in the program. Any user able to launch warnpykota
191           could flood over-quota users' email boxes.
192           
193           You should ensure that only the print quota administrator
194           can run the edpykota command, but this is actually not
195           enforced in the program. Any user could modify his/her
196           or other people's print quota.
197         
198           launching : chmod 750 /usr/bin/warnpykota /usr/bin/edpykota
199           should make you reasonably safe.
200           
201============================================================
202
203Please e-mail bugs to: alet@librelogiciel.com (Jerome Alet)
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