Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 02:56:17 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Keith Spencer" <bsd2000au@yahoo.com.au>, "fbsd" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Is Fbsd a good printer server???? Message-ID: <008501c14b28$7a95d7a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20011002054817.35730.qmail@web12004.mail.yahoo.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Keith Spencer >Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 10:48 PM >To: fbsd >Subject: Is Fbsd a good printer server???? > > >Hi all, >My school has issues in its win2k network with >printing. >We can't easily or cost effectively track user/printer >info. Your not alone. >Would like to allocate a budget per student and >if they go over charge them because they print waaaaay >toooo much. Sending us broke! Um - why cannot you simply charge every student a fixed fee that is an average of the printing costs? That's the way that it was done at all the schools that I ever attended. It gave me some peace of mind as a student because I then knew that the $75 per term per class that I paid for "lab fees" wasn't entirely going to the grad student's end-of-term beer keggers. >I am thinking of building a freebsd print server that >can do this stuff... >a) manage/own multiple HP jetdirect printers >to which 4050n and 2050n printers are attched >b) handle some kind of login or whatever from the >winNT/2k workstations to do print job accounting >c) mangae the stats of the printer acconting? > >Is this pie in the sky? For the most part yes. >FreeBSD is very good at many things but is this too >much to ask? >Would I need samba to do a lot of this stuff. >If so can I use the domain controller usersnames >logged into the workstations etc etc. Complicated? >I am HOPING FreeBSD can help me. The librarian is >going gray with the printer/budget issues. If you want to experiment, you can play with the PPR printing utility. It's located at ftp://ppr-dist.trincoll.edu/pub/ppr/ and claims to do accounting. I won't go into details as to how it does it but suffice it to say it's non-trivial. You will have to compile it yourself. I did once a long time ago and worked out all the patches to get it to build - but then after I got it built the thing didn't work, so I lost interest. I'm sure that someone somewhere would like it if somebody put it into the Ports section. But IMHO you need to go back to your powers-that-be and tell them it's flat-out impossible to accurately account for printing costs. I can guarentee that they aren't going to find anyone out there that will be able to get any printer accounting running that is worth a damn without a pile of money, and if they do then the students are just going to find ways around it. For example printing with other people's logins (like the librarians) is a favorite one. In the long run everyone will be happier if you just charge them all one lump sum that covers the costs. If the students don't like it then tell them that they can go to another school which is going to do the same thing to them. We all have costs from various institutions like governments and such that charge us fees for things we don't use, that's part of life. Despite the conservatives that seem to want to pay no taxes and instead make every last thing have a fee attached to it, many times the costs of collecting the fees in itty bitty bits like this is worse than just wacking it off the top across the board. This is one of those situations. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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