Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:33:38 +0200
From:      Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To:        Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@gmx.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Turning system accounting data into money
Message-ID:  <20111011223338.cc26536c.freebsd@edvax.de>
In-Reply-To: <4E94A3B4.6000601@gmx.com>
References:  <20111011160619.840c69f8.freebsd@edvax.de> <4E94A3B4.6000601@gmx.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:14:44 +0300, Nikos Vassiliadis wrote:
> Yes, the builtin accounting facilities do most of the stuff you
> are interested in. Just add 'accounting_enable="YES"' in your
> /etc/rc.conf, run '/etc/rc.d/accounting start' and use sa to
> examine the output. I believe the per-user accounting will fit
> the bill nicely. You did not mention jails, right?

Not at the moment. If required, I'd have to do that
within the particular jail (and hope values are still
correct).



> The networking part perhaps can be a firewall's job, though
> I don't know if the per-user IP traffic rules work properly.
> There were some problems regarding this ages ago...

Per-user can be assumed as per-known-IP, as most
users will "call" from the same IP (or at least
IP range).

A different approach could be to give specific
connection ports to the customers individually,
so instead of :22 for SSH, :22001 for customer 1,
:22002 for customer2 and so on, so this could be
accounted by traffic "accumulation" based on port.



> The builtin printing stuff I believe is for use with the
> ancient printing tools [...]

The _standard_ printing tools. :-)



> [...] and I know nothing about CUPS...

I won't let _that_ on my application server. So for the
rare printing jobs, I think I may be better of with manually
counting the pages.



> Hey, these are pretty old stuff you are looking for or perhaps
> this email was stuck in the mail server's queue for 25 years;)

Think more broader, and think again, and you'll find many
"old-fashioned" things that became "modern" again. The
accounting model from mainframe times: "the Cloud",
"rent a software", "rent infrastructures", "guided dialogs"
and so on -- nothing new per se. It's just that some
customers re-"explore" those things and the payment models
related to them. And as it's my only wish to please the
good customer... well, he's the king, and I... I'm just,
erm... Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!!! :-)




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20111011223338.cc26536c.freebsd>