🚀 go-pugleaf

I work at Stanford University in Residential Computing, and we've
purchased 28 NeXTstations and printers to serve as print routers for
28 different computer clusters, located in a number of different
subnets. Users will be able to print to the NeXT laserprinter from
Macintosh computers. We have set up an authentication system where the
user must have an account on the NeXT in order to print, and I am
keeping track of printing using BSD's built-in accounting software.

What I'm looking for is a simple way to store the information, either
a small database or small custom app or something like that. Ideally
this database would be centralizable (ie there would be a server that
maintained the database and responded to queries and updates from the
clients), but this isn't necessary immediately. My current plan is to
write a simple app which will grab the BSD accounting information,
bill the various accounts the correct amounts, and keep track of user
balances. I also need a way to prevent users who are overdrawn on
their accounts from printing - my current plan is to replace lpr with
a program which checks the database and exits if the account is
overdrawn with a meaningful error, passes its arguments to lpr if not.

Now, my question: has anyone done this before, and if so how did you
go about it? Or has anyone set up a similar accounting system? Did you
use an existing simple database application? Write your own little
program? Or what? Any and all input would be appreciated. I *will*
summarize to the net once we get this system set up, so feel free to
use e-mail or post.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Rollie
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Draphsor vo'drun-Aelf                   draphsor@deathstar.stanford.edu
Residential Computing, Stanford University	NeXTmail accepted