I'm baack...  and what an exciting time.

I have loaded the latest ubuntu and the latest mint, and boy is there big news for the multi user functionality

Previously to get multi user rdp sessions with GUI desktops there were a lot of hoops to jump through.

Now you just load the xrdp and xorgxrdp packages, No big script to run, no recompiling, and you have a multi user gui linux box

Just create your other user accounts and passwords, and voila... you can just log in via rdp and use your own linux gui desktop on the server. 


Wine 3.0 is the default wine for the new distros, and it runs avimark, even avimark 2018 just dandy. 

Set your share on the linux box straight from the file browser in mint or ubuntu for the avimark directory there to share but not allow guests.

All the file sharing seems to work without special edits of the smb.conf now. 

I have experimented and run concurrant wine and windows sessions against the same avimark database with no apparent ill effect.

so I am going to continue to play with this, but most of the hard stuff from before is now more or less automatic.  Whats not to like?

Confession.

I literally had almost forgotten the blog.. till I got an phone call with some questions today.

I ran on ubuntu/x11rdp/wine from the last blog entry till this summer, and with the usual occasional printer trouble or other network issues that everyone has occasionally, we just soldiered on.. I believe the server was still 12.04..

Then my main hard drive started getting flakey.. a few bad sectors... some hangs, and of course, during the busy time of year. 

I didn't have a recent clone with all my account info, and such loaded, so I created a quick new machine running ubuntu 14...

Ran the x11rdp script, prepped the machine, and transferred over the avimark operations to the new server.. and it worked... mostly.... sort of.

Something was different with the file permissions setup, and I was having trouble particularly with attachments being moved into the avimark directory and being available to all users.   Tried multiple things, but working on a production system in the busy time of the year just wasn't a great time.

I had migrated the emergency clinic to a windows server a few months earlier, and I bit the bullet, and loaded a copy of server2012r2 onto a new machine.  Ran for a while plain vanilla, but wasn't real happy with the speed.    Ran client/server avimark and was happier with the speed.

Short story.. I bailed..  I am not going to live forever, so I put the E clinic on 2012... so if I get hit by a car.... they are OK.

Once I had the learning curve down, it was much simpler (although more expensive) to make the leap back to Msoft.

I still use a linux box as my ssh gateway, and also as my personal desktop.  I use several other linux boxes to run rdp sessions off the Windows server. 

I may take some time this winter to look at another xwindow multi desktop sharing model called xtogo under linux.   Also may pound out the file sharing difficulties on a machine that I am not using for real work at the same time.

Still available for questions, but for the time being, I do not have a linux rdp setup running in actual business environment.   Just ran out of time when the server hard drive got boggy. 

Q4OS windows replacement

This may be the best Windows imposter (security blanket) ever for someone wanting to do a linux install for a reluctant end user...  Q4OS... google it.  It is a debian/kde derivative but the best out of the box wolf in sheeps clothing I have yet to see.   Can be set up to look like xp or 7. 

Very low overhead (300 or so meg download)  Easy facilities on the download page to load chrome, wine, etc etc as pre configured installs, and it works with the debian repositories, so anything can be added using apt or synaptic, which I loaded right away.  Should run well on legacy equipment.. I will probably try a memory stick install too..

Blazingly fast on the virtual machine I installed it on.   I may load one machine at the emergency clinic jusst to see if anyone actually notices. 

Not a lot of info about who's project this is, but they have given it a lot of time and thought. 

Picture of my new puppy

If there is no picture, it didn't happen.. so here is the picture..  

Avimark running in puppy

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) 

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... 

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.

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.

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

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 

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.

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.

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.

newest experiments

There really is little to give up moving avimark to wine/linux 

I now have been able to run avimark  client/server  with the guardian program running on the linux server.

I can run a totally native linux client either in standalone, or client/server connected mode.

I can run windows boxes and linux boxes in a mixed environment.

I can re index natively on the linux server.

I can run rdp sessions to the linux server concurrant with other native windows sessions and native linux sessions all in the same environment

I can use open office or libre office 

Netnotes works on Linux / WINE, complete with the avimark merge words. 

As it turned out, the last nut to crack was the native linux session on a linux client.  As it works out, you cannot access avimark through the nautilus browser and have it run correctly.  You have to mount the server drive/directory through the fstab configuration file at startup.  If avimark.exe appears with the real avimark icon, it will run.  If the real avimark icon isn't visible in the nautilus browser, it will not.

Finally using a simple bash script, it is possible to create a simple desktop icon for the end user to start avimark.

In essence, once set up, they can just double click on the avimark icon like in windows, and the session will appear to them, just like it did on the windows machine.

The only things you give up are

1. Updates must be loaded by off loading to a windows machine, updateing and then transfering back to the linux machine  (fails crc check through the automated avimark update system)

2. the real time spell checker has to be turned off for certain notes windows to work

3. certain key combos like ctrl alt f10 are reserved for the linux system, and the menu/mouse alternatives must be used.

4. certain times you must either access the appt book or another feature before the system will recognize a click on the magnifying glass (client lookup)

5. SENDING LOTS OF MONEY TO MICROSOFT FOR UPGRADES.

I am still here

I have been pretty busy as of late with Theatrical projects.  But that said, as fall and winter weather has descended, I am experimenting more again

My main clinic is still running on Ubuntu linux 12.04  It has x11rdp installed thanks to the script provide by scary gliders.

we run almost exclusively wine sessions served up by the server via rdp.

The boxes running rdp are mostly HP thin clients with Windows7 embedded running.

We also have a vista machine, some xp machines, and a couple of windows 7 machines all connected.  The lab aquisition runs on an xp box in native windows.  I also have the emergency clinic running lab aquisition on one of the thin clients.

Very stable at present.

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.