So, here's my setup. I have one of those older Zebra thermal label printers. It's hooked up to a RPi (nerd bragging moment: the RPi is actually inside the case and soldered to the board for power and USB - I made a classic printer fully wireless). I compiled and installed the Google Cloud Print driver so I could connect it to my shipping software.

Here's my question. Is there a way to get a page count or send an alert once the printer prints so many pages (which can then be reset)? It doesn't matter how - email, system alert via the network, or something.

It sounds trivial ("why don't you just count, moron?") but more than once, I've gotten busy, lost track of how many labels I've printed, and right in the middle of a job, the roll of labels runs out. If it were paper, it wouldn't be a huge issue since I could just add paper and pick up where I left off. However, Zebra has to be calibrated with the new roll, and the last label is just a flap. So, I lose track of which labels have been printed, which haven't, etc. Is there a built-in function or a script I could run? Yes, I could look at the logs on the admin web console and manually total it up, but there's gotta be a better way . . .

Glad to see the need bragging moment. A nerd of your status won't need spoonfeeding.:-)


Cups uses GS to handle the postscript. Why not count ghostscript invocations or instances?

So, I don't need MUCH spoonfeeding, but I'm not a CUPS guru, so . . . how the heck would I do that?

My current approach (prior to seeing your reply - I just got this little nasty to work) is something like the following:
Yeah, I can't say I'm immensely proud of this approach, but sometimes, duct tape does the trick. I plan on appending something to the logs to restart the counter after a certain number is reached so my script only counts up to that line in the log file. Then, I'll kluge some sort of alerting/emailing/something mechanism. If you have better thoughts, I'm 100% game.

I'm seriously so tired and out of it lately that I forgot I asked this a month ago but moved on before implementing anything:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ps-4175600078/

So, now, it's just a simple tea4CUPS posthook that launches this script. Sorry to double-post - I'm losing my mind . . .

Just for historical purposes, this is what I did.

1. Install tea4cups.
2. Prepend tea4cups:// to the desired DeviceURI in /etc/cups/printers.conf to enable tea4cups on that device.
3. Create the directory /etc/cups/tea4cups.d
4. Create a script in /etc/cups/tea4cups.d and make it executable (name it whatever you'd like). Make sure to edit the number in the if statement to adjust your desired threshhold for when the printer should submit an out of paper job.
   
   Code:

   #!/bin/bash
   
   count=0
   for i in `tac $(ls /var/log/cups/page_log* | grep -v .gz$) | sed '/OUTOFPAPER/Q' | cut -d ' ' -f 3 | sort -u`
           do
           #I always forget how to do math in bash. This throws errors, but it works just fine, so I just said "meh" and dumped the error to null. So, sue me.
           ((count+=`tac $(ls /var/log/cups/page_log* | grep -v .gz$) | cut -d ' ' -f 3,6 | grep $i | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | sort -n | tail -1`)) 2>/dev/null
   done
   
   #Edit the threshhold here
   if [ $count -gt 300 ]
           then
           echo -e 'Time to change the labels!\nThere have been' $count 'pages printed!' | lp -t "OUTOFPAPER" -d Zebra_LP2844
   fi

5. Edit /etc/cups/tea4cups.conf and add the following line:
   
   Code:

   posthook_0 : run-parts /etc/cups/tea4cups.d

Now, when you print, this script will run after each job. It checks to see how many pages have been printed since the last OUTOFPRINTER job was submitted. If this number has reached the desired threshhold, a page is printed after the current job to inform the user that the paper needs to be changed.

So, not the most elegant solution, but it works, and I figured I'd share/document it for when I inevitably format this system and can't remember how I made this work.

I have health issues ATM, so much innovation is low.
Anything that works is good for cups. The bar is low