Tracking printer usage by queue name

[Rich Hearn]

Hi All,

Before I go create come DCL code to do this, I thought I'd ask if it's already been done (or something like it).

I want to track printer usage using the queue name (ie: HPLJ 4000 = pqau(default ascii), pqauc (compressed), pqaul (landscape), pqau_135 (135 col wide)). I've looked at the Accounting Utility, but that dosen't seem to allow it by queue name. I've done several web searches as well as a search in this forum with no luck locating anything.

Does anyone know it this has already been done?

Is there a way I'm not aware of?

Tnx,
Rich

[Mark Caccavone_1]

Rich,
VMS accounting DOES allow you to view the usage on a particular print queue. However it may not be enabled.

Issue a $SHOW ACCOUNTING command and see if PRINT is enabled ,ie the stats are being recorded. I suspect it is not. To enable :-

$ SET ACCOUNTING/ENABLE=PRINT

Then you should be able to issue a

$accounting/full/queue=printqueuename

and see how many pages are being printed at what time etc etc.

[Rich Hearn]

Mark,

Thank you for the quick response. Someday I may even learn to state *everything* needed the 1st time I post... sorry for not having stated this originally.

Print auditing is turned on. I'm trying to do a "roll-up" report of all the printers for each month without having to specify the 2000+ print queue names explicitly so I can tabulate how many jobs were sent to each queue for the month.

Rich

[Ian Miller. · Accepted solution]

does this do what you want
$ ACCOUNT/SUM=QUEUE/SINCE=1-DEC-2007/BEFORE=1-JAN-2008/REPORT=(RECORDS,PAGES)

This will give you a three column report of queue name then record count (=number of jobs for that queue) and number of pages (may always be 0).

[Rich Hearn]

Ian

Absolutly perfect! Thank you very much for that line. I hadn't made the connection that the accounting records would be the count for the printer queue. Much easier than writing a proceedure from "scratch".

Tnx agn,
Rich

[Jon Pinkley]

Rich,

If you have a cluster, and your print queues are setup with multiple nodes with /autostart_on (see help init/queue/autostart), then you will need to combine the totals from each node that appears in any /autostart_on list.

Also, as Ian hinted, the page count may not be accurate. Page accounting is a function of the print symbiont, and may not reflect the true sheets of paper that were consumed by a print job. The only accurate way to get that info is if the symbiont can ask the printer the page count at the start and end of the print job.

Jon

[Rich Hearn]

Jon,

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I do have a 2 node cluster & as you have pointed out, I do have to merge the 2 counts for each printer (if necessary).

The page count isn't a necessary item for my report, so it's ok if it's not accurate. How long it will remain that way is yet to be seen :^)

I do thank you for those peices of information tho - their both "handy" to know about

Tnx agn,
Rich

[Jon Pinkley]

When I just re-read my previous response, it appears I was suggesting post processing the report files. Although that could be done, it is must easier to just let the accounting utility do the combining for you by using a list of input files, or a wildcard specification.

For example: to get just the latest accounting file from each system root's [sysmgr] directory: and create the file: sys$scratch:print.rpt

$ acc sys$sysdevice:[sys*.sysmgr]; /type=print /sum=queue /report=(records,pages) /out=sys$scratch:print.rpt

[Jan van den Ende]

Rich,

on combining accounting files:

(for some other reason) we start a new accounting file for each node at midnight every night.
Then we rename yesterday's files to reflect the node and the date (the latter in Comparison format!)
We do generate several accounting reports, but thit is just background info for the following.

For daily operation and second-level user support the ACCOUNTING utility very often can be quite helpful, especially when the accounting file does not grow unpleasantly big.

For daily ad hoc operation, my LOGIN.COM defines some logicals:
ACNT - wildcard file spec for today's accounting file over all nodes
ACCY - yesterday
ACMND - current month (sorry for the Dutch brief, MND = maand)
ACLM - last month.

Now, every invocation of ACCOUNTING simply takes one of those as parameter.

And since the ACCOUNTING utility does NOT automagically accepts the definition of the relocated ACCOUNTNG file, we have to specify an input file anyway, so now it is only shorter typing.

hth.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Rich Hearn]

Jon,

Thanks so much for the info on the combining the input files - I'll give that a try...

Jan,

Thanks for the thoughts on the DCL Symbols - I'll try putting them to use.

Thank you both,
Rich