Thin clients and linux just soldier on

Very quiet week here in Lake Wobegone.  The stuff is just working.  Avimark still works best when Wine is set to the "emulate a virtual desktop" mode.  Otherwise it it possible for a user to get themselves stuck with an alert window shuffled to the background, but not allowing them to go on. There are simple ways out of it, but its better if it doesnt happen in the first place.

Spent part of the morning configuring a thin client for use at the emergency clinic.  You do have to eliminate some software that you dont use in order to have room to load what you will use, but small price to pay, for the small price I paid :-)

If the weather is bad this weekend, I may spend some time working through a cookbook for all this at another vet who followed me down the rabbit hole started to put together.

Might also be able to prepare a live install disk to do the dirty work for folks ahead of time.  Starting to get some emails about this stuff.

If you stopped in, leave a comment, if only to say hello

HP thin clients are installed and running.. great product

So far the HP t5740e units with windows 7 embedded seem to be just what the doctor ordered.  Silent, low power consumption.  Option of running Avimark on the client, or rdp to the server, and run it there. 

I have now removed all the ncomputing terminals and replaced them with the standalone thin clients. 

We had some big storms through which they soldiered on.  I took a long weekend vacation, and they all functioned flawlessly while I was gone.

So for anyone keeping score, I am running about 15 rdp sessions with Avimark running on the Linux server in WINE. 

Interestingly there is a limit of 10 sessions built into the base configuration of the x11rdp, but  a quick edit of a config file fixed that.  

Ubuntu 12.04   WINE (ver?)  x11rdp    remote desktop on the windows machines. 

CUPS runs the printers on the linux side, and is very stable as long as you don't have any ip conflicts on your internal network.  A power outage, loss of internet, and a non total restart of my network pointed that out 

Total shutdown that evening and restart with everyone assigned a new ip by the router made it all happy again. 

Hp thin client

Just set up my first standalone hp thin client.  It has the advantage over the ncomputing devices that it doesnt require any special software on the central server like the ncomputing.  It should lend stability, because it was getting harder and harder to keep vspace running either under linux or windows xp.  Updates in xp tripped it up, and random failures occured all too often in the linux version.

The hp's are available for some pretty reasonable prices used.  This one is linux based, and I am waiting for a win7 embedded one to try as well.  The rdp client worked flawlessly with none of the keyboard mapping quirks of the ncomputing units.   Win7 would give me the option of running rdp on a linux or windows server, as well as executing avimark locally, loaded off a server if necessary.

Have to get some miles on them to be sure.. But looks promising.

Oops spoke too soon on the ncomputing

They jumped up and bit me again today.  They just couldnt get along with the cups printing system again, so... Shut em down, and the rest of the rdp sessions soldiered on perfectly all day.    Sigh

My apologies to ncomputing

The  ncomputing terminals kept logging out or hanging on their own neccesitating restarts to resolve it all.

The problem turned out to be network issues unrelated to ncomputing.  Mediacom's dns server addresses once again exposed my network to a non local .local domain.  The principal trouble that causes with ubuntu in a multi user setting is the ongoing resolution of the printers under CUPS.   I had one computer on the network that had been set long ago to a fixed ip address and fixed dns server addresses that were different from the rest of the network.  Go looking for printers attached to that one, and it was periodic choke time.  

I set everything to a public dns server address, and the printing issues went away completely, along with the network instability that was kicking off the ncomputing devices.   End result has been tremendous stability.

Looks like I am in this for the long haul now.  

Wow has it been that long?

Still using Avimark in linux.  Almost the entire clinic is running on it, with just a couple of Windows machines.  

The last few annoying things seem to have been tracked down today.  It involved linux file permissions.   Have to read about access control lists, chmod g+s command and the set facl command.

Seems that the temporary dump folder we used to take scans in gave permission for everyone to read, but was not granting write permissions on new files as they were created.  Similar behavior on the attachments folder and sub folders. 

I will also apply inheritance to the regular avimark folder, because it seems that occasionally an index gets grabbed and re written by a user, and the editing of purchase orders gets locked until permissions are re set.

For the most part though.. day to day, it is all working. 

Unfriendly shutdown of some computers during rainstorm the other day caused some ip conflicts between the haves and have nots after some computers powered down in an un coordinated fasion.  I really wanted to blame linux, but it was just run of the mill networking conflict stuff.

A nice structured shut down and re start fixed everything. 

I plan to test the latest Avimark release soon, but if it doesn't have any compelling new features, I will probably stick with 2012 5.11.0 for a while because it just works

Biggest problems/ glitches  seem related to the Ncomputing terminals and vspace.  Have had it get confused a couple of times in the last month, and had to do a server re start to clear.  The other non vspace terminals soldiered on just fine.

I must be one lucky schmuck

A few years back, I invested in some N computing thin clients, that divvie up a windows xp computer into multiple user desktops, for a couple hundred a pop, and running silently with only 5 watt power consumption.

Fast forward a few years, and microsoft got smart, and updated their user agreement in vista and win7, so that even though the technology works still, you need to buy licenses for each session to stay legal.  They also work with windows server, but you have to choose between regular terminal services, or ncomputing devices, as both wont work together on one server.

LINUX TO THE RESCUE.   It seems that the n computing devices are happy as a clam to work with ubuntu 12.04 64 bit.  I was able to log on from rdp and ncomputing at the same time with no ill effect,  so I wont have to replace my terminals.   They deliver a nice linux desktop environment to each user, totally isolated from the other.

So I will wait until after some scheduled travel, and then bring the 64 bit machine online at work. And go linux on the thin clients.