[Samba] Pool printing via cups and notification via samba

Jason Balicki kodak at frontierhomemortgage.com
Wed Jan 14 15:21:15 GMT 2004


Hello,

I've been thinking about setting up some sort of pool printing,
where a job can be sent and the system can decide which printer
to send it to.

I know that with cups I can define a pool, but I'd like to have
samba print a notification as to which printer cups sent the
job to.

The rationale is:  I have multiple printers, each under a
maintenance agreement.  I have some printers that are way
under their image count on the agreement, and others that
are over.  So, I'd like to have the system automatically
route the jobs evenly so that the image counts can even
up.  (For those of you who don't know:  if we're under
on our image counts that means we're paying for service
we're not getting, if we're over that means we have to
pay an overage charge per image printed.)

One problem I've got is that I can't put them all in the
same room (I don't have the space), but they are all on the
same floor, and making people walk to them would be good for
them.  :)

The other problem is how do I get cups to tell samba which
printer has printed so that I can notify the user (either
with the messenger service or email) where their job printed.

I haven't looked into this too deeply yet, but I wanted to
get a general feel for if it was possible, or better yet
find someone who's already done it and will now reply with
"Yeah, and here are my config files...".

Thanks,

--J(K)



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