J
Jerome Alet
Hi,
I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of PyKota v1.20 BETA.
PyKota is a GPLed print quota and accounting software for CUPS and LPRng
written in the Python language.
This software can store its datas either in LDAP or in a PostgreSQL
database, and features both hardware and software accounting.
Hardware accounting supports SNMP, PJL, Netatalk, or any other method you
may create yourself.
Software accounting natively supports PostScript, PDF, PCL3, PCL4, PCL5,
PCLXL (aka PCL6), and ESC/P2 but here too you can use your own accounting
software if you prefer.
In fact its great extensibility allows you to plug your own software at
most strategic points, giving an unprecedented versatility.
PyKota is available either in the form of 20 US$ yearly subscriptions to
Official packages (tarballs, .rpm and .deb), or for no fee through the use
of CVS.
Learn more about PyKota or download it from :
http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation
List of changes in 1.20BETA compared to 1.19 :
----------------------------------------------
- Added internal handling of SNMP and PJL_over_TCP/9100 queries
through the magic "hardware(snmp)" and "hardware(pjl)" accounter
directives' values.
This tremendously lowers the CPU usage because no subprocess has to be
launched, and is generally much more reliable than using an external
script. The use of external scripts is still allowed though, but
internal handling is now the preferred way if your printer supports
this.
NB : For SNMP you need to install the http://pysnmp.sf.net module.
- Introduction of the new dumpykota command which can dump PyKota's
datas in the following formats :
- comma separated values ;
- semicolon separated values ;
- tab separated values ;
- XML.
Importing datas in a spreadsheet can now be done through a data dump
and import, in addition to using the PostgreSQL ODBC driver. This
allows people who use the LDAP backend to create nice reports too.
- Introduction of the new autopykota command to ease the automation
of user account creation on first print when the limiting factor is
their account balance's value : this commands takes care of a special
case not directly handled by edpykota.
- Introduced the notion of PyKota administrators (e.g. members
of the lpadmin group) to delegate priviledges to non-root users. This
is now enforced in dangerous commands like pkprinters, edpykota, as
well as in the data dumper who could otherwise reveal private
informations. The reporting tool and user warning tool accept to be
run in extended mode by non-root users if they are PyKota
administrators.
- Numerous fixes for charset encoding. All textual
fields are now stored as UTF-8 encoded strings.
- Improvements in LPRng printer's hostname detection code.
- An md5 checksum of each job's datas is now computed
and exported to subprocesses as an environment variable. It will be
added to the database schema in the future, this will allow the admin
to refuse duplicate jobs through a configuration directive.
- Added the winbind_separator configuration directive to
automatically strip out the Windows/Samba domain name when printing.
- Added the --hardreset command line option to edpykota
to also reset users' life time page counters to 0 in addition to the
actual page counter.
- Added full support for PCL3 and ESC/P2 in software accounter.
More than 60 GhostScript devices are now supported and checked when
running the testsuite.
Supported Page Description Languages are now :
- DSC compliant PostScript ;
- Binary PostScript ;
- PDF ;
- From PCL3 to PCL5 ;
- PCL6 (aka PCLXL) ;
- ESC/P2 ;
- Improved the software accounter to correctly handle the
number of copies if set in the job's datas (not PJL yet though).
- All command line tools' help is now internationalized,
as well as all manual pages.
NB : For this BETA release only the English, French (and Belgian
French), and Spanish help and manual pages are complete.
- Added the German and Belgian-French translations.
- Lots of small fixes all over the place.
Comments are very much welcome.
Thank you for reading.
Jerome Alet
I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of PyKota v1.20 BETA.
PyKota is a GPLed print quota and accounting software for CUPS and LPRng
written in the Python language.
This software can store its datas either in LDAP or in a PostgreSQL
database, and features both hardware and software accounting.
Hardware accounting supports SNMP, PJL, Netatalk, or any other method you
may create yourself.
Software accounting natively supports PostScript, PDF, PCL3, PCL4, PCL5,
PCLXL (aka PCL6), and ESC/P2 but here too you can use your own accounting
software if you prefer.
In fact its great extensibility allows you to plug your own software at
most strategic points, giving an unprecedented versatility.
PyKota is available either in the form of 20 US$ yearly subscriptions to
Official packages (tarballs, .rpm and .deb), or for no fee through the use
of CVS.
Learn more about PyKota or download it from :
http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/PyKota/action_Presentation
List of changes in 1.20BETA compared to 1.19 :
----------------------------------------------
- Added internal handling of SNMP and PJL_over_TCP/9100 queries
through the magic "hardware(snmp)" and "hardware(pjl)" accounter
directives' values.
This tremendously lowers the CPU usage because no subprocess has to be
launched, and is generally much more reliable than using an external
script. The use of external scripts is still allowed though, but
internal handling is now the preferred way if your printer supports
this.
NB : For SNMP you need to install the http://pysnmp.sf.net module.
- Introduction of the new dumpykota command which can dump PyKota's
datas in the following formats :
- comma separated values ;
- semicolon separated values ;
- tab separated values ;
- XML.
Importing datas in a spreadsheet can now be done through a data dump
and import, in addition to using the PostgreSQL ODBC driver. This
allows people who use the LDAP backend to create nice reports too.
- Introduction of the new autopykota command to ease the automation
of user account creation on first print when the limiting factor is
their account balance's value : this commands takes care of a special
case not directly handled by edpykota.
- Introduced the notion of PyKota administrators (e.g. members
of the lpadmin group) to delegate priviledges to non-root users. This
is now enforced in dangerous commands like pkprinters, edpykota, as
well as in the data dumper who could otherwise reveal private
informations. The reporting tool and user warning tool accept to be
run in extended mode by non-root users if they are PyKota
administrators.
- Numerous fixes for charset encoding. All textual
fields are now stored as UTF-8 encoded strings.
- Improvements in LPRng printer's hostname detection code.
- An md5 checksum of each job's datas is now computed
and exported to subprocesses as an environment variable. It will be
added to the database schema in the future, this will allow the admin
to refuse duplicate jobs through a configuration directive.
- Added the winbind_separator configuration directive to
automatically strip out the Windows/Samba domain name when printing.
- Added the --hardreset command line option to edpykota
to also reset users' life time page counters to 0 in addition to the
actual page counter.
- Added full support for PCL3 and ESC/P2 in software accounter.
More than 60 GhostScript devices are now supported and checked when
running the testsuite.
Supported Page Description Languages are now :
- DSC compliant PostScript ;
- Binary PostScript ;
- PDF ;
- From PCL3 to PCL5 ;
- PCL6 (aka PCLXL) ;
- ESC/P2 ;
- Improved the software accounter to correctly handle the
number of copies if set in the job's datas (not PJL yet though).
- All command line tools' help is now internationalized,
as well as all manual pages.
NB : For this BETA release only the English, French (and Belgian
French), and Spanish help and manual pages are complete.
- Added the German and Belgian-French translations.
- Lots of small fixes all over the place.
Comments are very much welcome.
Thank you for reading.
Jerome Alet