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How can I find out how much someone is printing?


Have you ever wanted to find out how much is being printed by EasySpooler or Rhapsody on a particular printer? Maybe the printer is old and you are trying to decide if you need to replace it or whether you can simply eiminate it? Maybe you need to find out why color toner is being used up so quickly, or want to find out who prints to a particular printer.

You can find these things out and more by looking at the “activity_log”. By default this information is not collected, but it is easy to turn on.

If you are using the WEBUI to administer your system, simply select the “Admin” menu and then select the “Servers” tab. Next select “global tuning” and set the “act_log” to “Yes”. By default the activity log will then be kept by the month and retain twelve months worth of history. If these defaults are not to your liking, simply adjust the “act_killlog” and/or “act_logrollmax” parameters.

If you are not using the WEBUI, all these parameters can be found in the “$LPSDIR/adm/lpsd.default” file and the “Developer’s Guide” explains the available values in great detail.

Once the “act_log” parameter has been set to “Yes” and jobs have been spooled, the “activity_log” will begin collecting data. The data it has can always be diplayed by executing the “$LPSDIR/adm/bin/report_act” script. If the information is not displayed in a format you desire, since “report_act” is a script, it can easily be modified to your liking or you can simply import the contents of “$LPSDIR/adm/activity_log” into the reporting tool of your choice.