PyKota Print Quota System 1.23 beta

Developer :Jerome Alet
Price : FREE
License : GPL (GNU General Public License)
File size : 3.8 MB
OS : Printing

PyKota Print Quota System Description

PyKota is a complete GPLed Print Quota and Accounting Software Solution for the Common UNIX Printing System (aka CUPS) on GNU/Linux and Unix-like operating systems, which offers a great flexibility with regard to the page accounting methods it supports.

Older releases also supported LPR Next Generation (aka LPRng), and LPRng support might be re-added at a later date.

You can give a look at a PyKota vs other Print Quota Software comparison chart which I’ve written and which was checked and enhanced by Daniel Franklin, author of PrintBill, Ahmet Ozturk, author of Printquota, and Mickaël Carlier, author of PQuotas.

PyKota, which is Free Software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License , simply aims to be the reference in Print Quota systems. To realize such a goal, I must ensure that I can put a lot of time into this, in clear and politically incorrect terms, this means money.

Here are some key features of “PyKota Print Quota System”:

Free Software :

• Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

Commercially Supported :

• Support Contracts are available

Operating systems :

• Any Unix-like system as print server.
• Any operating system as client.

Printing systems :

• Supports both CUPS and LPRng as the printing system. NB : LPRng is only supported with versions of PyKota <= v1.22HotFix1, but support for LPRng may be reintroduced at a later date.

Databases :

• Supports PostgreSQL as the Quota Storage backend. Complete database creation script in SQL is included.
• Supports any LDAP server as the Quota Storage backend. Complete LDAP schema and sample empty tree are included. Plugging PyKota into your existing LDAP infrastructure is really easy thanks to PyKota’s great configurability.
• The print jobs history can be stored in any database of your choice (or in plain text files) if needed.

Printers :

• Hardware or Software accounting methods are completely configurable.
• Supports any printer which can report its internal page counter. Can ask printers for their internal page counter via SNMP, Netatalk, PJL, PS, or any other way. This is completely configurable.
• Supports DSC compliant and binary PostScript, PDF, PCL5 (up to), PCLXL (aka PCL6), ESC/P2, DVI, TIFF, OpenOffice.org Writer and OpenOffice.org Impress printers (or virtual printers) natively (through the direct use of pkpgcounter’s code) for software accounting methods. More formats to come.
• Supports any other Page Description Language for which you have a parser which can be scripted.

Quota systems :

• Supports printers and printers groups quotas.
• Supports users and users groups quotas.
• Supports page quotas. Page quotas can be set differently on a per printer and per user/group basis.
• Supports account balance quotas in any currency. Account balance quotas can be set on a per user basis. The account balance is shared amongst all printers. The history of payments (positive or negative credits to an user account) is kept.
• Supports high granularity periodic print quotas : down to one minute intervals if needed.
• Page quotas and account balance can be set/reset independantly.
• Page quotas can be set on a per user or per group basis for a particular printer.
• Price per page and per job can be set differently on any printer.
• Low level of page quota or account balance are configurable.
• Both soft and hard limit with configurable grace delay can be set for page quota.
• Both soft and hard limits can be increased or decreased at will.
• Possibility to disable quota enforcement for any user or group, while still keeping page accounting.
• Each user can have an overcharging (or undercharging) factor, which is applied whenever PyKota computes the cost of a print job.
• Specific pages and credits counters can be defined per billing code, and can be reset independantly of the printing history.
• Supports a passthrough mode for printers, which doesn’t modify users quota when they print.
• Supports a maximum number of pages per job, configurable for each printer.
• Each user can be completely forbidden to print, independantly from other users.
• A transparent printing mode is supported for users, in which their quota is not modified when they print.

Administration :

• Almost turn-key solution, with the help of the pkturnkey command line tool for database initialization and initial configuration.
• Powerful delegation of administrative priviledges.
• Powerful administration tools can be used to automate setting or resetting of quotas or account balances at specific intervals.
• Administration tools can modify several users, groups, or printers at once with the use of powerful wildcard characters.
• Account balances can be set, incremented, or decremented. History of payments is kept.
• Number of pages used can be set, incremented, or decremented.
• Both printers and users can be automatically added on first print in a completely configurable way.
• Quota report generator available either from the command line or in any web browser. The web-based quota report generator can be user/password protected.
• Print quote generator can tell users how much a print job will cost them in advance.
• Policy with regard to unregistered users can be configured for each printer to either deny printing, allow printing, or delegate the decision to any external tool.
• Warning and error messages can be automatically sent via email or via any other mean to the administrator, the user, both, or none.
• Warning and error messages’ content is completely configurable.
• Configuration can be changed without needing to restart the printing system.
• Complete print job history is kept. This can be disabled if needed.
• Automated low quota or balance remainder can be scheduled regularly or launched manually.
• Starting and Ending personalized dynamic banners can be generated on the fly, and accounted for or not, depending on some configuration settings. Banners can still be enabled even if the print job is denied. NB : Banners are a CUPS only feature for now.
• Duplicate print jobs can be forbidden automatically. The decision can be left to any script to decided this on a per job basis.
• Username and billing code can be overwritten at printing time, to allow people to login as guest users and print as authenticated users, for example.
• Powerful data dumper to export datas to other software (spreadsheets for example). Actually supported formats are :
• Comma separated values ;
• Semicolon separated values ;
• Tab separated values ;
• XML.
• CUPS’ page_log format, to easily interface in real time with third party apps like phpPrintAnalyzer and similar tools.

User Interface :

• All the command line tools accept the -h | –help command line option which prints all the available options and show usage examples.
• Completely internationalized. Actually supports the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian, Swedish, Thai, Greek, German, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Turkish and traditional Chinese languages. More to come.
• Web enabled print quota monitor, data dumper, and quote generator.
• An On Screen Display X-Window print quota monitor is included.
• An email gateway to allow users to retrieve their print quota information by sending an email message to a dedicated address is included.
• A cross-platform print quota monitor will soon be available as an purchaseable add-on.
• Third party web based management tools are available.