Next Previous Contents

## 15. Accounting

The LPRng method for doing accounting is based on experiences in a Academic environment, where avoiding printing accounting procedures has long been practiced. While the LPRng procedures are not bombproof, they do provide a wide range of facilities, with various degrees of trust built into them.

## 15.1 Printer Accounting Reality Check

The following was written by Patrick Powell `<papowell@astart.com>` in response to the expressions of frustration that are periodically vented in the `lprng@lprng.org` mailing list. While this addresses the use of a particular set of printer filters, i.e. - the ifhp set, the comments are appropriate to other issues.

In Academic institutions, avoiding printing accounting has been regarded as a challenge, an ongoing game of fat cat and poor starving mouse, between the Administration and the downtrodden, poor, over charged student. The following is a lighthearted ramble down the dark lane of printing accounting.

We will disregard the fact that if most students put as much effort into their studies as in finding ways to avoid accounting procedures then they would be Rhodes Scholar material, but I digress...

The accounting procedures put into the LPRng and the hpif filters may appear to be extraordinarily complex, but believe me, they are not. Firstly, we make the assumption that the printer has some sort of non-volatile page counter mechanism that is reliable and impervious to power on/off cycles. Without this mechanism the enterprising student ummm... user will simply turn off the printer. Software that prescans jobs for line counts and pages is notoriously unreliable, given even the most modest efforts of users to hide these procedures. The cost of running a PostScript simulator simply to do accounting has its flaws; without ensuring that the simulator has all of the interesting security loopholes closed, such as opening files, etc., it can become a trap door to hell for the system administrator.

Secondly, we must make the assumption that the student... uhhh... user will not be able to tinker with the page counter mechanism, i.e.- they will not be able to roll back the odometer on the printer, FOR THE DURATION OF A SINGLE JOB. I will digress and point out that a student actually did this for a challenge; it only took him a couple of weeks of study and a fully equipped microcontroller lab, and two (2) laser printers which he ruined in the experiment. HP was not amused when we sent them back under warranty, claiming that this our 'normal lab usage.'

Lastly, you should not mind a small amount of pilferage, or a few pages here and there being charged to the wrong account.

How Does It Work?

The `ifhp` filter records the page counter value at the start and end of each part of a print job. Each record has the form:

> `

>     start -ppagecounter -Ff -kjob -uuser -hhost -R...
>     end  -ppages -qpagecounter -Ff -kjob -uuser -hhost -R...

> `

When we use the OF filter and/or banners, we will see the individual jobs bracketed by the OF filter records:

> `

>     start -p100 -Fo -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     start -p101 -Ff -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     end  -p1 -q102 -Ff -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     start -p102 -Ff -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     end  -p3 -q105 -Ff -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     end  -p5 -q105 -Fo -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...

> `

It should be clear from the above that all we need to do is to add up the values for the -Fo (OF) filter lines and we are done.

Unfortunately, this is too simplistic. If for some reason the job is killed or terminates due to error conditions, the OF filter may not get to finish its work. Thus, we may see the following:

> `

>     start -p100 -Fo -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     start -p101 -Ff -kcfA100taco -uuser -hhost -R...
>     start -p110 -Fo -kcfA101taco -uuser -hhost -R...

> `

This is a clear indication that the user's job has been terminated. In this case we need to use the differences between pagecounters of the start records to do accounting.

There is a caveat to all of this; that is the problem of the last dead job in the list. If the last line in the accounting file is:

> `

>     start -p110 -Fo -kcfA101taco -uuser -hhost -R...

> `

is the last job finished or did it abort?

Who Used Up 2000 Pages of Paper Today?

Now we move on to the problem of real time accounting. Due to limited budgets, etc., many institutions would like to strictly enforce limits on paper use by students. As jobs are printed their accounts should be docked for the amount of paper use. One way to do this is to have an external accounting procedure update a shared database. The `ifhp` filter has provision for a shell script to be called at the end of print job; this is done by both the OF and IF filter. Thus, we can blithely assume that there is a central database carefully getting updates from the LPRng software, probably from dozens of different printers, and updating the accounting information.

The first question to be asked is simple: is this worth it? Perhaps doing accounting as a batch job once an hour/four times a day/once a day is cheaper than building an running such a database. If it costs $5K/year for the database software, you might just consider ignoring the 10,000 pages that get lost in the shuffle and use a simple set of awk/sed/perl scripts to update a database once an hour.

BAD JOBS - Who Do We Bill?

We inevitably run into an interesting question: what happens if a job does not complete correctly?

If you use the completion of the OF filter as a success status, I have to point out that many students... ummm... users soon find ways to send jobs to the printer that will cause it to lock up after their output has been printed. These jobs require power cycling of the printer and restarting the filter; a bit extreme, perhaps, but it has happened.

I suggest that you simply adopt a 'bill to last user of record' attitude, using the pagecount information as follows:

> `

>     start OF -- starting point for THIS job
>     start IF --  nice information, but not useful
>     start IF --
>     end   OF -- ending point for this job - can record information
>     start OF --
>     if no end OF for previous job,  then treat as end OF and
>       update accounting.

> `

Now somebody is sure to complain that they got charged for a bunch of pages that they did not use. This is inevitable; always carry a can of oil for the squeaky wheels. I might make the observation that once is accident, twice is coincidence, but three times is malice; be wary of the constant complainer and check out not only him or her but also their co-workers.

How Do We Update the Database?

I suggest that database update be done as follows:

You maintain a 'last page reported' counter for each printer in the database. When a successful job reports in, check to see that
pagecount + joblength == newpagecount;

If this is not the case, then you have had a some unsuccessful jobs. In this case I strongly recommend that you have a means to request the accounting reporting program to go back through the accounting file and find the last report for the page counter value and try to backtrack through the accounting files. The accounting file is one of the first things to be attacked by students... Ummm... users. It should NOT be kept on an NFS exported or mounted file system. It should be carefully pruned and copied, perhaps on an hourly basis.

Now some administrators have fallen in love with network based printers; do not believe ANYTHING that comes over a network connection without some form of authentication; PGP has some very nice Public Key mechanisms for handling this. This is a major weakness in using a database for keeping track of accounting - a weak authentication mechanism may lead to denial of service attacks by students flooding the database with bogus print usage reports; suddenly NOBODY can print and the administrator is driven to turning off accounting.

Good luck. I am never surprised when I encounter yet another wrinkle in this area.

Patrick ("You call me a Bean Counter? Guido, break this kid's fingers
with an adding machine!") Powell

## 15.2 How HP Printers Implement Page Counters

The following is from http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpl02119.html

HP LaserJet Printer Family - Page Count

Description Of The Page Count Feature On HP LaserJet 4 Family Printers

All HP LaserJet 4/5/6 family printers have a page count feature built into the firmware. However, this feature works differently depending on which HP LaserJet printer is being used. The following is a description of how the page count feature works for each printer within the HP LaserJet 4/5/6 printer families.

> `

>     HP LaserJet 4/4M printers
>     HP LaserJet 4 Plus/4M Plus printers
>     HP LaserJet 4P/4MP printers
>     HP LaserJet 4Si/4Si MX printers
>     HP LaserJet 4ML printers
>     HP LaserJet 5P/5MP printers
>     HP LaserJet 6P/6MP printers

> `

All of the above printers use the same method for keeping track of the number of copies. There are really two different page count values: Primary and Secondary values. Every time a page is printed, whether it is an internal job (such as a self-test) or a standard print job, the Secondary page count increases by one. This value is stored in standard RAM. Once the Secondary page count value reaches 10, the Primary page count will increase by 10. The Primary page count value is stored in a type of memory called NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM). This is important, since NVRAM is not cleared when the printer is powered off. Standard RAM, on the other hand, is cleared when the printer is turned off or reset. Thus, the Primary page count only increases in increments of 10.

Example

You have a brand new HP LaserJet 6P printer and you print a self-test page. When you look on the test page for the Page Count value, you will see that it says 1. Next, you decide to print a two page letter and, after that, another self-test. The page count value now says 4. Internally, the printers Secondary page count (stored in RAM) has the value of 4 while the Primary page count (stored in NVRAM) still has the value of 0. Now, you turn the printer off, then back on, and print another self-test. The page count value again says 1 since the previous value of 4, stored in RAM, was cleared when the printer was powered off. Finally, print a ten page document and then turn the printer off. Upon turning the printer back on and printing out another self test, you see that the page count value is 11. Internally, the Secondary page count value is back at 1 while the Primary page count value (stored in NVRAM) is 10. Added together, you end up with the resulting value seen on the self-test page.

HP LaserJet 4L/5L/6L Printers

The reason that the page count method for the HP LaserJet 4L/5L/6L printers differ from that of the other printers is that the HP LaserJet 4L/5L/6L printers do not have any NVRAM available. Thus, no way exists for the printer to retain a page count value once the printer is powered off. The HP LaserJet 4L/5L/6L printers have only a single page count value that increases in increments of one until the printer is powered off. At that point, the page count value is reset and begins from 0 once again.

## 15.3 Accounting Printcap Options

The accounting facilities are controlled and enabled by the following entries in the printcap file. The default value is indicated.

Tag | Default Value | Purpose
af | NULL | accounting file name
as | "jobstart $H $n $P $k $b $t" | accounting info for job start
ae | "jobend $H $n $P $k $b $t" | accounting info for job end
accounting_server | NULL
achk | FALSE
la | TRUE | do accounting for 'local' printer
ar | FALSE | do accounting for 'remote' transfers

## 15.4 Accounting File

The most common method of accounting is to record the start and end times of a job and its size to the accounting file. A typical entry for the printcap defaults are shown below.

> `

>     jobstart '-Htaco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-Pps' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' \
>     '-b1093' '-tNov  5 19:39:59'
>     start '-p12942' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-htaco.astart.com' '-Pps' \
>     '-c0' '-Fo' '-tSun Nov  5 19:39:25 1995'
>     start '-p12944' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-htaco.astart.com' '-Pps' \
>     '-c0' '-Ff' '-tSun Nov  5 19:39:27 1995'
>     end '-p12944' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-htaco.astart.com' '-Pps' \
>     '-b3' '-c0' '-Ff' '-tSun Nov  5 19:39:58 1995'
>     end '-p12942' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-htaco.astart.com' '-Pps' \
>     '-b2' '-c0' '-Fo' '-tSun Nov  5 19:39:59 1995'
>     jobend '-Htaco.astart.com' '-nroot' '-Pps' '-kcfA938taco.astart.com' \
>     '-b1093' '-tNov  5 19:39:59'

> `

The `jobstart` and `jobend` lines are added by the LPD server, as specified by the `as` and `ae` printcap options; the -b (byte count) indicates the numbers of bytes in the job.

The `start` and `end` lines are produced by the filters; the of filter has an -Fo, and the if filter a -Ff entry. The filters in the LPRng distribution produce the indicated output format by default. The -p value is the current value of a page counter device (if any), and the -b value indicates the total number of pages used.

It should be clear that a simple AWK or Perl script will be able to process an accounting file and update accounting information for accounting purposes; the usual problems with truncation, time stamps, etc., are left as an exercise for the system administrator. However, for those who are exercise challenged, the LPRng distribution `.../LPRng/UTILS/accounting.pl` file is a template that can be used to process the accounting information. The printcap for using this file should resemble:

> `

>     pr:
>       :as=|/.../accounting.pl START
>       :ae=|/.../accounting.pl END
>       :if=/.../ifhp
>       :of=/.../ofhp
>       # set this to the printing device
>       :lp=prdevice
>       :sd=/.../%P

> `

Note that the accounting file must exist and will not be created by the `lpd` server. The accounting file should be periodically truncated.

## 15.5 Accounting Using an Accounting Server

To accommodate even more aggressive and centralized accounting, a method to make a connection to a print server and send information to the server has been provided as well. If `achk` option is set, it is assumed that the `af` entry specifies a connection to server on a remote host. The `lpd` server will send the `as` string to the server, and then wait for a single line of text from the remote server. If the first word on the return line is `accept` or `hold`, the job will be either accepted for printing or held. Any other value will cause the job to be deleted.

At the end of the job the `ae` string will be sent to the server. No response is expected. Example:

> `

>     :af=accounting.site.com%2300,tcp
>     :achk
>     :as=starting
>     :ae=ending

> `

The port that the connection originates from will be in the range set by the configuration or printcap `originate_port` option.

## 15.6 Using Filters For Accounting

Some sites have expressed interest in using a central accounting mechanism to check that users have permissions. This can be done by using the an alternative form of the as (accounting start) and ae (accounting end) printcap tags. If the as and ae are filter specifications, then a filter is invoked. If the as (accounting start) filter returns a non-zero exit status, then its value is used to handle the job as indicated by the Abnormal Termination codes for filters. At the end of the job the :ae: filter will be invoked in a similar manner, but its exit status is ignored.

When using an accounting filter, the STDIN is attached (read/write) to the accounting file or remote host specified by the `af` printcap option, STDOUT to the output device, and STDERR to the status file. The filter program would be invoked with the default filter options.

For example, here is a sample entry to check and update accounting

> `

>     printer
>     :as=|/usr/local/libexec/filters/accounting.pl start
>     :ae=|/usr/local/libexec/filters/accounting.pl end

> `

## 15.7 Accounting Utility accounting.pl

In order to provide a framework for doing using the outlined accounting methods, the LPRng distribution `UTILS` directory has a `accounting.pl` script. This script does the following.

1. It is assumed that the accounting filter is invoked with the following printcap entry. The start and end is used by the filter to determine at which point in the accounting process it is invoked.

   > `

   >     printer
   >     :as=|/usr/local/libexec/filters/accounting.pl start
   >     :ae=|/usr/local/libexec/filters/accounting.pl end

   > `

2. It maintains the accounting file as a set of entries in the following format:

   > `

   >     START [job identification]
   >     start -pnn ...
   >     ...
   >     end -pnn+pagecount ...
   >     END -ppagecount [job identification]

   > `

3. Each time the filter is invoked with the `start` tags, it will add a `START` record to the end of the accounting file.
4. When it is invoked with the `end` option, it will update the accounting file and add an `END` entry.
5. It will handle aborted jobs by looking for jobs with have a `START` entry and a following `start` line and assuming that they progressed to the point of starting print operations, i.e. - the printer page counter was accessed and reported. It will then look for the next `START` entry with a following `start` line, and assume that the pages between the two points were used by the aborted job.

Administrators can use this script as a starting point for more advanced accounting. For example, rather than just recording the information, at the job start the script can query either a local database or a remote server to see if the user has permissions to access the printer. At the end of the job or when an `END` line is written to the accounting file, the local database or remote accounting server can be updated.

Next Previous Contents