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... 


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.

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.