[Misc] Sharp MX2600 User authentication problem

[Jason210]

Here's the configuration.

Two printer drivers are installed on our server for the same device. One I have named "Monotone" and the other I have named "colour". We have some print management software that allows us to monitor what goes through which driver, and we can then charge our users for it. We don't want to restrict usage, but monitor it with our server software, which monitors individual accounts and which printer driver they are using. In this way can we track coloutr and monotone printing, and charge accordingly. We have successfully used this configuration on our earlier RICOH C2500 for four years.

I am now trying to do the same with the Sharp MX2600. I have spent over two weeks with struggling with this problem and am now very frustrated, disappointed and angry. I am stuck with a 5 year contract and the Sharp dealers - OFFICE MANAGEMENT, don't seem interested in helping.

My first approach was to set the preferences for the Monotone driver as black and white, an the preferences for the colour printer as colour, and then use the NTFS security settings on the server to prevent domain users from changing these printer settings. Worked fine in the past. when we had a RICOH 2500, but with this Sharp, the machines uber-authentication system just overides everything. The user can change the default just by going in on the printer settings despite NTFS restrictions that are supposed to prevent them from doing that. So I abandoned the NTFS approach.

Instead I have I created one colour, and one black&white user account/group on the MX, and allocated each a pin number. I copied those pin numbers to the credentials of the respective drivers, on the server.

This works fine on the server, when printing out directly. You'd think the problem was all solved. The problem is that the domain clients aren't getting the PIN numbers, and I don't know why. We can't give publicise the pin numbers because the students will use the colour pin number on the black and white driver.

Finally, I tried using "Device Account Mode" on the MX. I created a special account to lock down every setting on the printer except black and white printing. This works, although the students can go in and play with the printuing preferences - these have no effect (also confusing).

But how do we allow our users to print out in colour, through the colour driver? There seems to be no way to get colour functions to work without loggin onto the colour account, and to do that it requires a PIN number.

Everything could be solved if only the PIN numbers could be automatically distibuted to the users.
Even though apparently the way to do this is to enter the PIN number in the job handling tab on the driver on the server, the clients aren't getting it. Instead, a pop-up comes up asking for the PIN number, and we're back to square 1.

[OMD-227]

The only time I've seen someone use an MX machine with User Authentication activated AND use a third party print management software program to track everything (which the MX does by itself anyway) was on an MX5500N with software called Papercut. This ran on their server and tracked all users of copying & printing. I dont know the logistics behind it, but I know it works.

All MX machines with user authentication activated perform pretty much what you want anyway. If you give each user a pin number, assign those pin numbers to either color or B/W permission, install those pin numbers in the driver for each person, you will not have the extra pop-up box coming up. The users will be unable to print or copy in color if their pin number is not registered in the color permissions.
At the end of the month, you can view or print out the full report of who did what over the last month and it displays everything in easy to understand terms.

I would say the user authentication on the Sharp is more secure than the Ricoh if you cannot get it working correctly. You seem to be setting it up right, but there is something not matching up between your program and the internal user authenication settings/setup.

[Jason210]

I would say the user authentication on the Sharp is more secure than the Ricoh if you cannot get it working correctly. You seem to be setting it up right, but there is something not matching up between your program and the internal user authenication settings/setup.

Thanks. I've kind of got it working now, by using the Default account setting and restricting it to black and white. This works smoothly and automatically. However, when the user wants to print out in colour through the colour driver, which is linked to another MX account, the pop-up comes up...asking for the PIN number for that MX account.

I have had two guys down here from the re-sellers, Office Management, to look at it. The said that everything was set up correctly but they didn't know how to get the PIN number to follow with the driver. They thought that what I have done should work.

The problem with the pop up is that we can't give out the number for the colour account, because it can be used on the black and white account. It has to come automatcially with that driver.

To use MX print monitoring would require LDAP authentication. That's ok, but I don't know how comprehensive that montioring is, and how easy it is to adminster. Our software is easy. Each account as a balance associated with it, and when the balance is depleted, students purchase credits, and we si8mply find their account and add to the balance.