Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:06:19 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Turning system accounting data into money Message-ID: <20111011160619.840c69f8.freebsd@edvax.de>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
This is _not_ a spam message trying to sell something stupid to the list. I'm just searching for a solution to turn consumed computing resources into a number and a currency symbol. :-) Reason: A growing amount of (my) customers seems to like this concept: They speed a low fee for access to systems and applications, and they want to pay according to what they did with that system. The access fee covers access and some basic services (backup & quota), and for anything "more advanced" they want to be charged per "units" used, or per "consumed resources". This can be dialog time (SSH), disk I/O, disk occupied, pages printed (can happen) or pages required to print on exceptional specific forms (can happen once or twice a year and is charged with an additional fee for fold, staple & mutilate). Sounds stupid? I have _real_ customers intendedly requesting that payment model (instead of "just pay amount n Euro a month and do whatever you like"). Accidentally, I remembered history. So I thought: This funcitonality has been present on UNIX systems for many decades. But _how_ to use it? I know there's the command set for accounting, for example the "ac" command. But what does its output "total 7264.15" mean? There also are "acct" (process accounting), "sa" (for system accounting) and "pac" (for printer accounting, just dooesn't seem to work with CUPS). I'd also like to use the /etc/csh.logout resp. ~/.logout mechanism. When a user logs in, he will be presented the program he uses (or a menu, in case he uses different ones). This can also be a regular "remote desktop" session. When he logs out, a message should be displayed that informs him how much will be charged for the session. At the end of the month, he should get an invoice with the proper accumulated amount. For example, if a user wishes to issue a "make a backup _now_, because I intendedly want _this_ current state backed up _now_", this will be seen as additional I/O load and disk occupation (because it's handled aside of the regular backup runs that should be part of the "basic package" charged with the "conneciton fee"). Or as I said, he issues printing for stuff he cannot print at home, so he will be charged for 500 pages. And in case he transfers 10 GB data in, and 10 GB data out, he will be charged for that traffic, as well as for the I/O. The sessions in questions will be SSH sessions (text mode) as well as SSH/X sessions (remote desktops). Maybe someone already uses something similar he wants to share? Suggestions and inspirations are welcome. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20111011160619.840c69f8.freebsd>