Print Server / Printer Accounting

[Glen Gibb]

One of the printers at my site is an HP LaserJet 4. I tried numerous
ways to get the page count from it, and in the end I discovered the only
way that worked for me was to query it for the page count using PostScript
(even if the job just printed was PCL).

LPRng is able to query the printer for a page count using postscript
commands.

Glen Gibb
Ridley College


On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Adrian Head wrote:

> Quite some time ago I tried to get the internal page count out of a HP
> LaserJet 4MV with a DirectJet card.  I tried a few things at the time
> including SNMP but could not find the page count.  What did I miss at
> the time?? Where can I go to get more information - for memory HP web
> site and service support were not very helpful.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Adrian Head
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	J.L.Gilmour at exeter.ac.uk [SMTP:J.L.Gilmour at exeter.ac.uk]
> > Sent:	Thursday, 20 July 2000 17:46
> > To:	Multiple recipients of list SAMBA-NTDOM
> > Subject:	Re: Print Server / Printer Accounting
> > 
> > > 
> > >    If you have a bidirectional link to your printers (often
> > available around port 9100 on HP's JetDirect Boxes), and have printers
> > that keep track of page counts internally, you might be able to query
> > the printer before and after each print job for the number of pages it
> > has printed.   Subtract the two (or let a utility do it) and you have
> > the number of pages printed.   Any decent departmental printer should
> > support some method to do this (either by Hewlett Packard's PJL
> > language or in Postscript itself).
> > > 
> > 
> > We bought some commercial software which we discovered only counted
> > show-pages,
> > which when our students use 4up or similar commands, caused mayhem.
> > 
> > Anyway, there are two ways to implement it - either interogate the
> > printer
> > before & after the job for the page counter. Or, use something like 
> > ghostview to count pages for you (assuming enough poke on the print
> > server).
> > 
> > I have some code for accounting based on the printer's page counter if
> > you
> > can use it. Not guaranteed to work as it was written by my
> > predecessor. 
> > 
> > 
> > Jayne.
> > 
> > -- 
> > +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
> >       Jayne Gilmour, BSc. MSc.  Unix & Network Administrator 
> >        Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter
> > 
> >     "Why is line printer paper strongest at the perforations?"
> > +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>