Printer accounting and cutoff from UNIX: is it possible?

[Chet Murthy]

winfave at dutrun.UUCP (Alexander Verbraeck) writes:

>At our department (information systems) a large number of students
>are working on Unix systems (Sun, HP). These systems are connected 
>via ethernet. On the system we have a number of laser printers. At
>the moment, students are wasting enormous amounts of paper using the
>laser printers. We would like to limit their use of the printers.

>Unix does accounting for the printers. Question: is it possible to
>check for the number of printed pages and perform a "budget cutoff" 
>when the allowed number of pages is surpassed? Does anyone have
>software for this? 

>BTW: Why does UNIX have a cutoff for disk usage (quota) but not for 
>printer usage?

On SUNs, there's the "af" field in the /etc/printcap file, which turns
on printer accounting. You then use the "pac(8)" filter to format and
sort the file.
	--chet--
	murthy at cs.cornell.edu