Avimark running in puppy
Friday, December 19, 2014
Puppy Linux.. is now fully house trained.
I was playing with various versions of linux on memory sticks as a simple way to instantly upgrade xp stations. Pre config, clone that sort of thing.
I loaded a nice ubuntu 14.04 on a modest 16 gb pny memory stick, and it ran quite well. would pause occasionally for large disk writes because of the slowness of writing to the stick, but running remmina to a rdp desktop was slick and quick. Also could run wine and avimark native.
Cloned to another slightly different pny stick, and the performance was dismal. Moral to the story.. they don't always put the same memory in their sticks.. widely varying performance.
So I took another look at puppy. For those of you who don't know, puppy loads from a cd or memory stick and runs almost entirely in the host computers ram with no install or alteration of the host's drive.
It has really matured in the last few years, and I can load wine, remmina, etc etc relatively painlessly, and this little bugger runs fast even on old legacy stuff.
The video drivers can be a little fussy on really old equipment, Press the space bar at boot up to go plain vanilla and choose the right one after booting. but I can plug a 4 gig memory stick into practically any machine that can boot from usb, and have a workstation that can run Avimark via rdp or natively in wine instantly with zero install on the host.
1 edit of the fstab to connect to the workgroup "server" and I am off and running.
or plug in the login info to remmina for rdp and off we go.
Puppy's desktop was pretty ugly a few years ago, but they now have some nice icons and themes that are simple to install, along with a whole host of email calc paint write web browser and other utilities. It didn't take me long at all to have a very good looking desktop. the interface is very intuitive.. works more or less like windows.. start button down in the lower left.
Windows shared Printers were found and installed automagically.. even the dymos
You have access to the whole ubuntu repository for just about any function you care to add, and the install process will strip it down to the essential. Like not loading 50 language/keyboard options and not loading the non compiled libraries etc.
When you log out, any changes are saved to a file on the stick and loaded at next boot.
Best of all, you can save your configuration as a remastered install cd, so that creating new identical sticks is an absolute no brainer... or you could provide the world with pre configured puppy clones.
Staff won't stay off the interwebs? plug in a puppy stick, boot the workstation from that, and so what if they hurt the install (unlikely in linux anyhow)
I loaded a nice ubuntu 14.04 on a modest 16 gb pny memory stick, and it ran quite well. would pause occasionally for large disk writes because of the slowness of writing to the stick, but running remmina to a rdp desktop was slick and quick. Also could run wine and avimark native.
Cloned to another slightly different pny stick, and the performance was dismal. Moral to the story.. they don't always put the same memory in their sticks.. widely varying performance.
So I took another look at puppy. For those of you who don't know, puppy loads from a cd or memory stick and runs almost entirely in the host computers ram with no install or alteration of the host's drive.
It has really matured in the last few years, and I can load wine, remmina, etc etc relatively painlessly, and this little bugger runs fast even on old legacy stuff.
The video drivers can be a little fussy on really old equipment, Press the space bar at boot up to go plain vanilla and choose the right one after booting. but I can plug a 4 gig memory stick into practically any machine that can boot from usb, and have a workstation that can run Avimark via rdp or natively in wine instantly with zero install on the host.
1 edit of the fstab to connect to the workgroup "server" and I am off and running.
or plug in the login info to remmina for rdp and off we go.
Puppy's desktop was pretty ugly a few years ago, but they now have some nice icons and themes that are simple to install, along with a whole host of email calc paint write web browser and other utilities. It didn't take me long at all to have a very good looking desktop. the interface is very intuitive.. works more or less like windows.. start button down in the lower left.
Windows shared Printers were found and installed automagically.. even the dymos
You have access to the whole ubuntu repository for just about any function you care to add, and the install process will strip it down to the essential. Like not loading 50 language/keyboard options and not loading the non compiled libraries etc.
When you log out, any changes are saved to a file on the stick and loaded at next boot.
Best of all, you can save your configuration as a remastered install cd, so that creating new identical sticks is an absolute no brainer... or you could provide the world with pre configured puppy clones.
Staff won't stay off the interwebs? plug in a puppy stick, boot the workstation from that, and so what if they hurt the install (unlikely in linux anyhow)
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
OK I finally got there, How I saw the light
No combination of permissions and settings seemed to work on a cifs mount. The cifs and the nautilus browser mounts are qualitatively different and apparently use a different code base.
But Avimark to the rescue (in just a bit)
first .. I mounted the Windows7 server share with this line added to my /etc/.fstab configuration (the config file that tells linux what to connect to at boot time.
//tserver/avimark /home/jtw/mnt cifs rw,user=jtw,password=mywindowspassword,uid=1000,cache=strict,rsize=131007 0 0
/tserver/avimark is the network path to the server
/home/jtw/mnt is where I'm putting the connection (mount) on the linux client
cifs is the file system type uid gives my local user permission cache=strict dictates the caching behavior trying to mesh linux and windows rsize=131007 maxes out the blocksize that can be read across the network.
Navigate to /home/jtw/mnt on the client
invoke wine avimark.exe from a terminal command line..and....it fails... Cant read the indexes at startup and says there is a lock on them... sooooooooo
Start up the Avimark guardian/server stuff on the server.
navigate to /home/jtw/mnt on the client
invoke wine avimark.exe /connect and connect to avimark server.... and MAGIC HAPPENS!!!!
Now I can finally configure a linux client to load the server directory at boot, and create a desktop icon that will invoke a script that navigates to the /home/jtw/mnt and invokes wine avimark.exe /connect..
So as I suspected avimark server does more than just load bigger blocks of data... It controls a lot of the cacheing/ oplock crap locally and brokers communication better, so that all the parts of avimark that failed me before, now work
Appointment book and whiteboard have been the hangup/ sticking point in this scenario...
But Avimark to the rescue (in just a bit)
first .. I mounted the Windows7 server share with this line added to my /etc/.fstab configuration (the config file that tells linux what to connect to at boot time.
//tserver/avimark /home/jtw/mnt cifs rw,user=jtw,password=mywindowspassword,uid=1000,cache=strict,rsize=131007 0 0
/tserver/avimark is the network path to the server
/home/jtw/mnt is where I'm putting the connection (mount) on the linux client
cifs is the file system type uid gives my local user permission cache=strict dictates the caching behavior trying to mesh linux and windows rsize=131007 maxes out the blocksize that can be read across the network.
Navigate to /home/jtw/mnt on the client
invoke wine avimark.exe from a terminal command line..and....it fails... Cant read the indexes at startup and says there is a lock on them... sooooooooo
Start up the Avimark guardian/server stuff on the server.
navigate to /home/jtw/mnt on the client
invoke wine avimark.exe /connect and connect to avimark server.... and MAGIC HAPPENS!!!!
Now I can finally configure a linux client to load the server directory at boot, and create a desktop icon that will invoke a script that navigates to the /home/jtw/mnt and invokes wine avimark.exe /connect..
So as I suspected avimark server does more than just load bigger blocks of data... It controls a lot of the cacheing/ oplock crap locally and brokers communication better, so that all the parts of avimark that failed me before, now work
Appointment book and whiteboard have been the hangup/ sticking point in this scenario...
Sunday, November 9, 2014
oops smbnetfs not as holy as I thought
turns out that Avimark cant go down the directory tree and retrieve documents and attachments using the smbnetfs mount.
it is still a useful tool for ad hoc browsing of your network, but doesnt give the full avimark functionality.
So for now, until I break the cifs permissions code, the only way I know to have full function in Avimark/wine is to use the x11rdp terminal service model that I have been running on for almost 2 years now, or to use a linux server instead of a windows server.
cifs seems to work connecting to the linux server and working peer to peer, just not cifs to a windows server....YET.... I am not devoting full time to this, but I will keep working to solve this final piece of the puzzle.
it is still a useful tool for ad hoc browsing of your network, but doesnt give the full avimark functionality.
So for now, until I break the cifs permissions code, the only way I know to have full function in Avimark/wine is to use the x11rdp terminal service model that I have been running on for almost 2 years now, or to use a linux server instead of a windows server.
cifs seems to work connecting to the linux server and working peer to peer, just not cifs to a windows server....YET.... I am not devoting full time to this, but I will keep working to solve this final piece of the puzzle.
Friday, November 7, 2014
The holy Grail.. SMBNETFS
Ok campers. I found that ubuntu 14.04 and the wine package that is standard in the repository work just dandy with Avimark through the network to either a Windows 7 acting as server, or a linux server using samba.
Only trouble was.. no persistance. I had to navigate through the file browser, and invoke avimark.exe from there. Not very friendly for the end user.
I tried permanantly mounting a file share through cifs, which gave me a local directory that was linked to the server shared directory, and this worked for access on a linux box, but alas.. when I tried it to access win7, I ran every permutation of file permissions, and I could not get a fully functional avimark to run on a cifs mount.
Scouring the web revealed smbnetfs. I loaded it and a simple one line command in the terminal, which should be able to be issued from a script mounts the share to the directory of your choice, and you can navigate there either from the file browser, or more importantly from the command line.
to invoke you just open a terminal (or create a script)
the command is smbnetfs //home/jtw/win
where //home/jtw/win is the directory where you want your network neighborhood to appear and be accessable. It should go without saying that the directory actually has to exist first before you try to mount the network there.
once you can get there from the command line, you can write a bash script to start avimark.
I copied and hijacked one of the application icons, (open office) ctrl c ctrl v, right clicked and replaced it's startup command with one that invokes my script, and replaced the graphic with a little penguin in a doctors coat for my new linux avimark icon.
Net result is an ubuntu 14.04 machine that can run peer to peer and have a persistant link to the server, and have a simple icon for the end user to start avimark, just like in windows.
You do have to have your password protected sharing turned off on the windows 7 machine, or you may get a message that you cant load the directory.
Only trouble was.. no persistance. I had to navigate through the file browser, and invoke avimark.exe from there. Not very friendly for the end user.
I tried permanantly mounting a file share through cifs, which gave me a local directory that was linked to the server shared directory, and this worked for access on a linux box, but alas.. when I tried it to access win7, I ran every permutation of file permissions, and I could not get a fully functional avimark to run on a cifs mount.
Scouring the web revealed smbnetfs. I loaded it and a simple one line command in the terminal, which should be able to be issued from a script mounts the share to the directory of your choice, and you can navigate there either from the file browser, or more importantly from the command line.
to invoke you just open a terminal (or create a script)
the command is smbnetfs //home/jtw/win
where //home/jtw/win is the directory where you want your network neighborhood to appear and be accessable. It should go without saying that the directory actually has to exist first before you try to mount the network there.
once you can get there from the command line, you can write a bash script to start avimark.
I copied and hijacked one of the application icons, (open office) ctrl c ctrl v, right clicked and replaced it's startup command with one that invokes my script, and replaced the graphic with a little penguin in a doctors coat for my new linux avimark icon.
Net result is an ubuntu 14.04 machine that can run peer to peer and have a persistant link to the server, and have a simple icon for the end user to start avimark, just like in windows.
You do have to have your password protected sharing turned off on the windows 7 machine, or you may get a message that you cant load the directory.
Friday, October 3, 2014
A general linux samba reminder.
I had almost forgotten that my internet provider has a domain called .local exposed on it's dns servers.
this screws up name resolution between linux and windows machines via samba which use a .local domain and expect it to be.... duh local.
I change my dns server on the network interface to the google public dns 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as the alternate, and the problem magically disappears.
This doesnt seem to be well documented on the interwebs, but came to light a year or so ago when I switched internet providers, and my office lan blew up so to speak.
worked with the internet disabled, wouldnt work and resolve names with the internet on...
Thought I would bump this subject, because it took a lot of hours to figure out, and the references are buried deep in the web.
See Avahi and .local domain for more reading on the subject.
Mediacom was able to give me some addresses to plug into my router that didnt do this but obviously it didnt stick because the problem showed up again
this screws up name resolution between linux and windows machines via samba which use a .local domain and expect it to be.... duh local.
I change my dns server on the network interface to the google public dns 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as the alternate, and the problem magically disappears.
This doesnt seem to be well documented on the interwebs, but came to light a year or so ago when I switched internet providers, and my office lan blew up so to speak.
worked with the internet disabled, wouldnt work and resolve names with the internet on...
Thought I would bump this subject, because it took a lot of hours to figure out, and the references are buried deep in the web.
See Avahi and .local domain for more reading on the subject.
Mediacom was able to give me some addresses to plug into my router that didnt do this but obviously it didnt stick because the problem showed up again
Monday, September 29, 2014
Got a little slack time and loaded a copy of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS both the 32 bit and the 64 bit flavors.
Some of the base configuration of samba file sharing to talk to windows machines had to be configured to talk to my network address range, but when that was done, and wine, winbind samba and cifs were all configured, a wonderful thing happened
They fixed whatever was not handling the windows name resolution for certain avimark modules, which caused an ubuntu/wine station to fail without first doing an explicit file system mount.
Now I can just navigate to the avimark directory using the normal file browser, and click on avimark and go.
I can finally have an ubuntu workstation run Avimark peer to peer from a windows or a linux server without having to have any special commands or scripts to mount the file share.
What this means is that xp workstations can now be converted and used as avimark workstations running Ubuntu, without having to make any changes to an office's server/network configuration.
Good way to dip your toe into the water.. it finally works
Some of the base configuration of samba file sharing to talk to windows machines had to be configured to talk to my network address range, but when that was done, and wine, winbind samba and cifs were all configured, a wonderful thing happened
They fixed whatever was not handling the windows name resolution for certain avimark modules, which caused an ubuntu/wine station to fail without first doing an explicit file system mount.
Now I can just navigate to the avimark directory using the normal file browser, and click on avimark and go.
I can finally have an ubuntu workstation run Avimark peer to peer from a windows or a linux server without having to have any special commands or scripts to mount the file share.
What this means is that xp workstations can now be converted and used as avimark workstations running Ubuntu, without having to make any changes to an office's server/network configuration.
Good way to dip your toe into the water.. it finally works
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Wow has it been that long?
I checked the blog based on something posted on the avimark yahoo group, and saw that it has been Since February.
For anyone keeping score, my office is running pretty well, and the architecture is as follows. 8 core motherboard with 12 gig of memory running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Still set up the users and rdp sessions using the script obtained from Scarygliders.net.
We have upgraded all of the xp and vista machines to Win7. All stations log into a remote desktop on the linux server, and can start up a session of avimark running under Wine.
Machines include 8 hp thin clients with embedded win7 4 laptops running win7 1 laptop running ubuntu linux, 2 desktops running win7. So we run as many as 15 rdp sessions at a time, with no appreciable speed penalty. I had to increase the memory to accomodate that many sessions concurrant. The sessions would have trouble as multiple sessions of avimark and open office were loaded, if the memory use approached 90% or more. I think it was probably related to disk/memory swapping. More breathing room fixed us right up.
Avimark has proven relatively well behaved. In all honesty, we do have the occasional session hang on an rdp session, which seems to coincide with a user walking away from avimark with multiple specialty windows open and then letting the avimark session time out.
I may increase the user time out setting in avimark to avoid this. Easily fixed by opening a terminal window on the server and issuing the "sudo pkill -u username" command. Session closes and then can be restarted by the user.
All in all the heterogenous network seems to be pretty happy, even the printing, some of which happens under windows, and most of which is handled by linux/cups.
I will probably look at Windows server 2012 again this fall/winter, but the economics of what I have done are hard to beat.
For anyone keeping score, my office is running pretty well, and the architecture is as follows. 8 core motherboard with 12 gig of memory running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Still set up the users and rdp sessions using the script obtained from Scarygliders.net.
We have upgraded all of the xp and vista machines to Win7. All stations log into a remote desktop on the linux server, and can start up a session of avimark running under Wine.
Machines include 8 hp thin clients with embedded win7 4 laptops running win7 1 laptop running ubuntu linux, 2 desktops running win7. So we run as many as 15 rdp sessions at a time, with no appreciable speed penalty. I had to increase the memory to accomodate that many sessions concurrant. The sessions would have trouble as multiple sessions of avimark and open office were loaded, if the memory use approached 90% or more. I think it was probably related to disk/memory swapping. More breathing room fixed us right up.
Avimark has proven relatively well behaved. In all honesty, we do have the occasional session hang on an rdp session, which seems to coincide with a user walking away from avimark with multiple specialty windows open and then letting the avimark session time out.
I may increase the user time out setting in avimark to avoid this. Easily fixed by opening a terminal window on the server and issuing the "sudo pkill -u username" command. Session closes and then can be restarted by the user.
All in all the heterogenous network seems to be pretty happy, even the printing, some of which happens under windows, and most of which is handled by linux/cups.
I will probably look at Windows server 2012 again this fall/winter, but the economics of what I have done are hard to beat.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
The looming "death" of xp
There was some discussion the other day on the avimark yahoo group about the looming drop dead date this spring of xp. One concern that I hadn't thought of was those clinics that run their credit card machines through the internet will not be allowed to continue using xp. A user has several choices.
1. Keep running xp and hope for the best. Probably not as high risk as some might think as long as you stay local and off the internet behind a firewall.... but who does that. Your users WILL fire up the web browser... so say goodby to xp
2. Upgrade workstations to Win7. Well thank you very much microsoft, you killed the upgrade package with the intro of Win8. You still can get Win7 in the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version, but there are varying interpretations of whether mere mortals are allowed to do this to older hardware. As far as microsoft support goes you will be on your own.. you become in effect the OEM, and provide support to your end user.. who happens to be ..you.
3. Upgrade to Win8.. just say no.. the new top layer will drive business users batty, and very likely legacy equipment may not run it well anyway.
4. Buy new hardware. $$$$ For the business environment, be advised you can still get Win7 on new hardware from certain vendors.. see number 3
5. Go with Linux. Free.
More about 5. If you are running rdp sessions off of a true windows server, then this is a no brainer. Ubuntu 12.04 lts (long term stable) version has about 3 years remaining on it's support cycle. It will install itself either as a dual boot beside your existing win xp install, and you can still go back to xp for historical purposes, or you can do a fresh install. The install is actually smoother nicer and quicker than any windows install I have done. The ubuntu installation iso can be downloaded, and then burned to a cd on your windows machine. Then just boot from the cd to start the process. it will let you test drive from the cd before any installation or modification of your machine is done. Support is wonderful Paid support is available, but Google is your friend and really all you need to answer almost any question.
Install, press the little round ubuntu icon in the upper left, type in Remmina to bring up the rdp program, and log in to your server. Wahoo.. No changes in settings on the server, and it's free.
If you are running local sessions loaded off of an xp or win7 "server" in peer to peer fashion, you can still do the ubuntu install, but you probably have to wait for me to get off my keester and write the cookbook on how to run Avimark on a peer linux workstaion under WINE. It can be done, and with no mods to your peer "server" other than maybe creating a new user account.
Note that neither of these scenarios are putting you on a Linux server like I am running. You are just salvaging existing machinery, but making it safe and secure, instead of the inevitable xp vulnerabilities that will arise with the end of service.
1. Keep running xp and hope for the best. Probably not as high risk as some might think as long as you stay local and off the internet behind a firewall.... but who does that. Your users WILL fire up the web browser... so say goodby to xp
2. Upgrade workstations to Win7. Well thank you very much microsoft, you killed the upgrade package with the intro of Win8. You still can get Win7 in the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) version, but there are varying interpretations of whether mere mortals are allowed to do this to older hardware. As far as microsoft support goes you will be on your own.. you become in effect the OEM, and provide support to your end user.. who happens to be ..you.
3. Upgrade to Win8.. just say no.. the new top layer will drive business users batty, and very likely legacy equipment may not run it well anyway.
4. Buy new hardware. $$$$ For the business environment, be advised you can still get Win7 on new hardware from certain vendors.. see number 3
5. Go with Linux. Free.
More about 5. If you are running rdp sessions off of a true windows server, then this is a no brainer. Ubuntu 12.04 lts (long term stable) version has about 3 years remaining on it's support cycle. It will install itself either as a dual boot beside your existing win xp install, and you can still go back to xp for historical purposes, or you can do a fresh install. The install is actually smoother nicer and quicker than any windows install I have done. The ubuntu installation iso can be downloaded, and then burned to a cd on your windows machine. Then just boot from the cd to start the process. it will let you test drive from the cd before any installation or modification of your machine is done. Support is wonderful Paid support is available, but Google is your friend and really all you need to answer almost any question.
Install, press the little round ubuntu icon in the upper left, type in Remmina to bring up the rdp program, and log in to your server. Wahoo.. No changes in settings on the server, and it's free.
If you are running local sessions loaded off of an xp or win7 "server" in peer to peer fashion, you can still do the ubuntu install, but you probably have to wait for me to get off my keester and write the cookbook on how to run Avimark on a peer linux workstaion under WINE. It can be done, and with no mods to your peer "server" other than maybe creating a new user account.
Note that neither of these scenarios are putting you on a Linux server like I am running. You are just salvaging existing machinery, but making it safe and secure, instead of the inevitable xp vulnerabilities that will arise with the end of service.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Changed the name today, because I ended up doing very little sailing this year, and wrote even less about it...sigh
On the upside, Avimark and Ubuntu linux continue their peaceful coexistance. Had a router failure this month, and a primary hard drive failure on the server, but it wasnt hard to replace either. The staff was not happy about running windows peer to peer for a day, while I fixed the Server though.
On the upside, Avimark and Ubuntu linux continue their peaceful coexistance. Had a router failure this month, and a primary hard drive failure on the server, but it wasnt hard to replace either. The staff was not happy about running windows peer to peer for a day, while I fixed the Server though.
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