print server software

[JimmyD]

Hello, I'm wondering if any of you have opinions on software that could track print jobs for a network printer. I'd like to be able to audit individual users for excessive printing. We also like to track individual users on our semi-public computer lounge who are all logged in on the default guest account (can't use the windows user name). A secondary objective would be to route print jobs automatically to the least busiest printer. I have found some software that will do this (print manager plus), but I'm looking if someone else has experience setting up stuff like this.

[locosway]

Windows? No idea...

[elrcastor]

at the college i work at we use goprint in our computer labs for print management.

[BB63Squid]

Sound like you are skirting the edge of S/W print serve management. Might be time to consider going with a print server on a simple W2K3 platform.

[ocabj]

We use Samba for print serving. But then we use shell and Perl scripts to handle the accounting management (i.e. print quotas) on top of Samba.

[Macadelic4]

We use Samba for print serving. But then we use shell and Perl scripts to handle the accounting management (i.e. print quotas) on top of Samba.

This is a decent solution if you are comfortable with a bit of Linux config, OP. +1.

[ocabj]

This is a decent solution if you are comfortable with a bit of Linux config, OP. +1.

It's actually pretty tough. Setting up Samba to share printers is easy. To do actual print quotas and print accounting is a total pain because it's all custom DIY scripting.

[patman]

Linux makes it so much easier to do printer accounting than pre 1991 it's astounding. SysV and BSD worked decently way back then with lp/lpr for printing from a unix account. The problem I found was that SAMBA was a pain to compile and use with DOS, so combining the two was a nightmare.

Today we have easy Linux and mature SAMBA. Combine that with Google and we get:
CUPS printing

and more specifically:
PyKota "PyKota is one of the most advanced Free Software dedicated to print accounting and print quota enforcement."


Ok, so we have Guido and his followers helping a whole lot also....

-> it's even more fun when you work with printers that have built in job control!
...

This is a decent solution if you are comfortable with a bit of Linux config, OP. +1.

[JimmyD]

Thanks for all the help guys I'm looking into all suggestions