UCS 2.4 - Univention

13.5 Print quota
13.5 Print quota
The univention-printquota package allows print quotas to be set for printer groups and printers. The
quota policies can be defined for certain users and user groups either per each user or per user group.
The print quota system switches automatically between CUPS and the respective printer. In doing so
it checks the user’s permissions and print limits. In addition the costs are calculated for each print job
and documented in a print job history. Different reports can be created from this collected data using the
appropriate programs.
When operating a printer with a quota, the print job history in the CUPS web interface loses its validity. To
ensure that CUPS operates correctly, it always receives a report that the print was successful.
A page counter is updated for each user after every print. When a user excesses his soft limit, he receives
an e-mail - in so far as Univention Configuration Registry is configured in this way (see Section 13.6.4) -
which informs him that he is nearing his hard limit. If the user’s page counter reaches the hard limit, the
print job which exceeds the limit will not be finished. An e-mail informs the user that he can no longer print
on the printer in question. This e-mail is sent to the user’s primary e-mail address.
Attention:
The possibility to set quotas for users and user groups on printers and printer groups can result in confusing
quota policies. Printer quotas should thus be planned thoroughly in order to avoid later overlaps in the
policies.
The print quota system determines the size of the print job during printing. This is done by analysing the
data sent to the printer after conversion by CUPS. If the data format is not recognised or the quote limits
are exceeded the print job is interrupted. The following data formats are analysed correctly:
• PostScript
• PDF
• PCL1, PCL2, PCL3, PCL4, PCL5
• PCLXL ( PCL6 )
• ESC/P2
The print quota system saves all data in a database. For this it uses a PostgreSQL database, which is
installed with the univention-printquotadb package.
Now when a user prints, the quota set for the user for the printer used is requested firstly. It is then checked
whether the print job exceeds the quota and if necessary the print job cancelled and the user informed by
e-mail.
If a user does not have a quota for a printer in the database, the print quota policies set in Univention
Directory Manager are requested. When there are entries here for the user, these are entered in the
database and the print job carried out as along as it does not exceed the quota. When the user has no
policy, the print job is cancelled.
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