MailBag Friday (#16)

 Education, General, Real World ThinManager  No Responses »
Aug 312012
 

 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

Q-   I am currently running Wonderware InTouch and ACP ThinManager and have a problem with InTouch crashing and ThinManager not detecting it.  When it crashes it displays a green screen and ThinManager AppLink does not detect the crash so it doesn’t restart InTouch.  Is there a way for ThinManager to detect and restart the application when it hangs or crashes?

 

A - Create a batch file and name it whatever you want.  InTouchWatchdog.bat for instance.  This is the program you will use in AppLink instead of view.exe.  In that file include the following:

start /wait Path\to\Intouch\View.exe
shutdown /f /l

That will log-off the session if view ends.  Once the session is logged off, the thin client will then start a new session.

-TM

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Q- We are in the process of  upgrading our Windows Server to Version 2008 R2 X64.  Can I continue to use my ThinManager version 5.0 or will I need to upgrade or download a patch?

 

A –  There is no issue.  ThinManager Version 4 SP3 (as well as anything beyond) may be used on Windows Server 2008r2 x64.

-TM

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Q- I installed UltraVNC on a laptop and connected it to our firewall via specific open port to connect to the ThinServer and allow for Shadowing.    I am wondering about the security risk of open ports in the firewall.  What would keep a deviant employee from getting something off the internet that allows them to send keyboard strokes or mouse movements to a thin client?

 

A – ThinServer has a couple of behind the scenes security authentication measures built in to prevent unauthorized access. It is impossible for any random VNC software to connect to a ThinManager thin client as ThinServer must first tell the client to accept a connection from a certain device.

-TM

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MailBag Friday (#13)

 Education, General, Real World ThinManager  No Responses »
Aug 032012
 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing solutions for some of the most frequently asked questions posed to our ThinManager Technical Support team.  This weekly feature will help educate ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great technical support is an essential part of the ThinManager platform, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

 

Q-   We found an issue that we are looking to resolve.  With the user and user’s desktop in a different domain than the ThinManager server, the ThinManager software installed on the user’s desktop asks for a username and password.  We don’t know what to enter?  User’s name, password? Server username, password?   Is there a way to have the ThinManager software installed on the user’s desktop authenticate using Windows security?

 

A - ThinManager does try to use the current user’s credentials to log into a remote ThinServer.  If that user doesn’t have sufficient privileges on the server that it’s connecting to it will prompt for a password.  By default, ThinManager only lets users in the administrators group connect.  You will need to use the same domain as the server or a local account to connect.  An easy way to check is to have the user log onto the console of the server and open ThinManager.  If it can connect locally, that user should be able to connect from a remote ThinManager installation.

-TM

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Q- What is the function of multicast, and smart multicast?  Is it just used to speed the download of client software and configuration when a group of clients all come on line at the same time?  

 

A – All multicast does is enable the firmware to be downloaded a little bit faster to the clients.  It allows it to be transferred to multiple clients at once instead of one at a time.  Most of the time the difference between using multicast and not isn’t noticeable, or at least is negligible.

-TM

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Q- I can’t communicate with my clients.  When looking at the Thin Client tree the icon is red. Is it a configuration issue? 

 

A – If it is red then the ThinManager interface isn’t talking to the ThinServer database engine that runs as a service.  Try right-clicking on the red icon and select “Reconnect”. If that doesn’t work go to Services and restart the ThinServer service.

Our ThinManual has a troubleshooting section in the back on page 39.

-TM

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Q-  Are there any recommendations regarding the deployment of CALs?  If CALs are used in per device mode with mirrored or redundant mode (2 x terminal server nodes) and the license server node fails will an issue occur with client access and licensing? Do I need additional CALs to cover this and perhaps split them over the two terminal servers or is one CAL per client device on one license server sufficient?

A – I would use Per Device. Each thin client needs to use a unique user name. If you have 10 thin clients you will have 10 users. At this point it doesn’t matter, you could use 10 Device or 10 User TS/RDS CALs.  But, if you are running multiple copies of an application, like on a MultiMonitor box you might need to have the extra sessions log in as unique users, raising the user count while keeping the device count the same. Or, if you have a box that you allow multiple people to log into this would require more User licenses than Device licenses.

You should look at our Licensing Overview Tech Note (http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/03_Licensing/LicenseOverview.pdf) regarding TSCALs and RDSCALs.

-TM

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MailBag Friday (#5)

 General, Real World ThinManager  No Responses »
Jun 082012
 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing Technical Support emails we have recently received.  Our hope is that this weekly feature will help to educate other ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great Technical Support is an essential part of any software product, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

Hello,

Is the ThinManager Mobile for Android and Windows Phone 7 coming soon ?

-Deepack S.

 

 

Deepack,

We are working on developing the mobile application for other devices but currently offer the following mobile options in the Apple App Store:

 

ThinManager Mobile (v1.4.1) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/thinmanager/id419214021?mt=8

ThinManager iTMC (v1.1)  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itmc/id517350971?mt=8

-TM

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ThinManager,

We are running a redundant system and just complete setting up the iPad connection.  In order to get this to work had to upgrade our secondary server to version 6 and I used a demo license.  Now that the system is proven to be stable I would like to move some production clients on to the one that has Version 6 on it.  Can I relicense it with our license and still be able to upgrade our primary server later?  The issue is the Demo Software disclaimer and this will disrupt production clients.

-Richard A.

 

 

Richard,

Your license is eligible to upgrade to ThinManager 6 on both computers. The install ID changes when you upgrade so you need to reactivate your license

You can’t run both TM5 and TM6 in a synchronized system. You need to un-sync before upgrading the one.  If they are un-synched the TM5 system will continue to run as is. Its license will stay valid.  The upgraded system needs its license reactivated. You can reactivate the copy on the TM6 server with its new Install ID, leaving the remaining TM5 one the same as it is/was.  Apply the new license to the TM6 computer. It will now have a valid license. DON’T SYNCH THEM.

When you are ready to upgrade your TM5 computer to TM6 you can at will, synchronize, and re-activate with the now new installation ID from the second computer.

-TM

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Hello,

I have downloaded the ThinManager 6 to try on our redundant servers.  I have everything set up, with the ThinManager running on both the primary and back up server, and configured a thin client from the primary server.

 

The issue I’m faced with is that when AppLink is specified, as soon as the thin client boots logs into the server with its login/pw, it automatically logs off.  I can see under the Users tab in Task Manager on the server that the client is indeed logging in and then it logs off regardless of the primary or back up server.  Also, the logging in/out activity is documented under the ThinManager event log tab.  When I don’t have AppLink enabled, thin client logs on and is fine.

 

I thought it may have been a permissions issue so I’ve tested the AppLink with Internet Explorer, same issue of logging in and out with the thin client.  However when I don’t have AppLink and the thin client logs into the server, I can manually start Internet Explorer (meaning that it shouldn’t be a permissions problem).

 

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

-William C.

 

 

William,

Microsoft won’t let you run a specific program on a 2008 server. By default you are limited to a desktop.
Check the Server 2008 Tech Note at http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/10_Microsoft/2008ServerTips.pdf for details on changing the setting that allows AppLink to work. It is on pages 8-11.

-TM

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Dear support members,

 

I am using ThinManger 6.0 with a demo code.

Here is my configuration:

 

ThinManger Server:

Thinmanager is installed on windows xp sp3.

I created an administrative user which launches the service.

DNS is configured

 

Display server:

The terminal server is a VM XP SP3.

I created an administrative user with the same password as the Thinmanger server.

I can reach this machine with a windows rdp client.

 

Both ThinManager and Display server are not member of an active directory.

 

I tried to fill the field domain with the name of the machine, but keep getting the following error meassage: “WTSAPI32.dll connection failed.”

Any ideas?

-David B.

 

 

David,

1) The WTSAPI32.dll Failed message means that the ThinServer service can’t talk to the terminal server yet. It doesn’t mean a terminal can’t connect and run, you just can’t get the Users, Sessions, and Processes used in SmartSession load balancing.

 

Workstations like XP have a different security system than Servers and there are a few settings that need to be changed. It sounds like you’ve done several but I think you’re missing a DCOM configuration change or UAC setting change.

 

Look at these Tech Notes and make sure you’ve got the settings changed:

 

http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/13_Errors/DCOM_Issues.pdf

http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/13_Errors/XP_DCOM_Issues.pdf

http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/13_Errors/RemoteConnectionTrouble.pdf

 

2) If you are using DNS you need to use the Microsoft name for the server and not the IP address in the Terminal Server Name Field.

 

-TM

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MailBag Friday (#3)

 Real World ThinManager  No Responses »
May 252012
 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing Technical Support emails we have recently received.  Our hope is that this weekly feature will help to educate other ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great Technical Support is an essential part of any software product, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

 

Hi guys,

We have a customer that is looking to confirm that the WinTMC installation is supported in Windows 7. Can you let me know if the current 2.1.0.5 version is supported in Win7?

Thanks,

Doug

 

 

Yes, make sure the firewall is open.

-TM

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Hello,

I am trying to get the ThinManager system set up at my site and have a few questions. First question is when I try and use the iPad “ThinManager” app I am unable to connect to my ThinManager server. The error I encounter is “Connection failed because Socket Error”. The next problem is that we have all Devon IT thin clients which can use the PXE boot to connect, However when I put them on the real network the default Microsoft PXE server that we use overrides the ThinManager PXE server. Is there a way in the ThinManager software to force primacy on a specific ip range? Last but not least I am not sure how exactly to set up a client to open a specific program instead of running a full RDP session. If someone can clear up these issues for me I would appreciate it.

Respectfully,

Jesse M

 

 

Do you have the proxy service installed and running?  You can download it from here: http://www.thinmanager.com/ios/iosProxy1.php if you haven’t already.

 

There is no way for PXE responses to be prioritized.  The thin client will try to connect to the first valid response that it gets.  You can set ThinManager to only respond to clients it knows about, but I’m unaware of a way to setup other PXE servers to do the same.   If you need the other PXE server you can set up ThinManager and your thin clients on one subnet and the other PXE server on another subnet.  Otherwise, if you don’t need it, it would be easiest if you just disabled the other PXE server.

 

To get a thin client to launch an initial program using display clients:

http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/01_Intro/Manual60/TM6_Chapter13_Display%20Clients.pdf

-TM

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Hi,

Our customer would like to know if their license can be used to add another display terminal server to their primary node.  They currently only have one display terminal server on this node.

Are there any further details you require in order to confirm this?

Thanks,

 

Colin B

 

 

 

They can add terminal servers to their system with no change to ACP licensing. We license terminals, not the terminal connections.

-TM

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Hello,

I downloaded ThinManager 6.0 on your web site and I want to know if our license 5.0 will work with the 6.0 version.

MARC R

 


 

 

 

Yes it will.  You will need to reactivate your license with the new installation IDs though once you have 6.0 installed.  You can find the new installation IDs under Install > Licenses in ThinManager.

-TM

 

MailBag Friday (#2)

 Real World ThinManager  No Responses »
May 172012
 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing Technical Support emails we have recently received.  Our hope is that this weekly feature will help to educate other ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great Technical Support is an essential part of any software product, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

We are looking to roll out more thin clients at our plants.  One thing we are wanting to do is give Plant Area leaders the ability configure users through Wonderware InTouch.  Is there a way to set a TermSecure user’s RFID   Card number   via the TermMon ActiveX Control ?
 
Thanks!
Harry N.

Harry,

There are only two ways to associate a card with a TermSecure user.
1) You can set up a terminal with a card reader and ThinManager running (as a administrator). Have all the cards and scan them one at a time and associate the card with a pre-created TermSecure user.
Or you can scan a card and create the user on the spot. I think a replacement is quicker.
2) Get each card and record the user and the card number. Go into each TermSecure user configuration and add the badge number to the Card/Badge Information page.
-TM
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Recently at one of our sites, they noticed some odd behavior and we would like to know if this was the result of a known issue (they are currently at v4.0 SP3).

They have DeltaV Operate sessions for both their production and test environments available. One day they received complaints that users were connecting to the wrong sessions. Upon investigation, they found that users were connecting to TDVNPADELTAV01 even though they were requesting a DeltaVOperate display client (not a DeltaVOperate_Test client, which are restricted to significantly fewer termsecure users) . They double-checked that TDVNPADELTAV01 was not assigned as a DeltaVOperate display client, and eventually went as far as removing and adding the server and cycling the ThinManager service on both servers (they have failover). Since that time, all behavior appears to be normal.

Any thoughts on why this occurred? I have been assured that there were no deliberate configuration changes made by the site administrators, however, could that change be made accidentally? I also could not find anything of note in the event logs.

Any insight you could provide would be helpful.

Thanks and Regards,

Brad B.


No, this isn’t a known bug.  Are they using DNS? If so maybe the tables pointed to the wrong server for a while.
We do have the ability to send an email when a configuration changes and the ability to backup the configuration automatically.
See 9.3.1.7 Event Selection Page and 9.3.1.8 E-Mail or Windows Message Recipients Page in the http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/01_Intro/Manual60/TM6_Chapter9_Configuration%20Wizards.pdf for emailing configuration changes.
This is for TM6 but it is unchanged from TM4.
See http://www.thinmanager.com/technotes/07_Features/ScheduleConfigurationBackups.pdf about automatically backing up the configuration.
-TM
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I’m designing a network topology where it will include some wireless devices. My provider is asking me about the bandwidth consumed by Thinmanager. I’m clear about using 100MB speed… but I’m not sure about how much consumes each Thin client…

Could you give me an approach for this data?

Jean C.


The bandwidth consumed by a RDP session depends greatly on what you’re running on it.  Higher resolution, color depth, and complexity will cause more bandwidth to be consumed.

A typical 64k color session will use between 20-30kbps and simple programs could use as little as 5kbps.  A 32M color session running an HMI or PowerPoint presentation will use between 50-150kbps.  Keep in mind, this is per session, not per client.

-TM

MailBag Friday (#1)

 Real World ThinManager  1 Response »
May 112012
 

Every Friday, we dedicate this space to sharing Technical Support emails we have recently received.  Our hope is that this weekly feature will help to educate other ThinManager users and provide them with answers to questions they may have about licenses, installation, integration, deployment, upgrades, maintenance, and daily operation.  Great Technical Support is an essential part of any software product, and we are constantly striving to make your environment as productive and efficient as possible.

 

 
I was wondering where the configuration is stored for ThinManager(3.1)?  I need to make sure it is backed up to my tape backup system.
Thanks,
Danny C.
 

 

It is the ThinManager.db file located in the ThinManager installation directory.  You can also save a back up from ThinManager by going to Manager > Backup Configuration.

-TM

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I Installed ThinManager 6.0 from 4.0. Now it says it is running in demo mode, the license utility still shows the master license. What do I have to do to get this out of demo mode and back to normal? Thanks.
Regards,
Ross D.

 

Just go to our web site and re-activate the master license.  The install id changes at upgrade and you need to reactivate it with the new install id.

-TM

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I have been running ThinManager on a single server for several weeks now without an issue. We finally got the secondary server configured and setup in ThinManager and have ThinManager auto-synchronizing across servers.  The thin clients seem to be working fine, and instant failover is also working well.
 
I do have one issue that I cannot figure out. While viewing the Display Server tree, If I click on the primary Terminal Server I am able to tab through and view User and Session data on that server.
 
If I then click on the secondary Terminal Server and try to do the same, I receive errors stating no information available and error gathering load information.  The small status indicator light slowly flashes green and red and as soon as I click on the primary Terminal Server the status light on the secondary Terminal Server turns green and remains green.  It seems to flash red only when polling information from server.
 
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Al G.
 
 

 

Check that you are using the same credentials for both terminal servers in ThinManager and those same credentials for the ThinServer service.  This also needs to be an account that has local administrator privileges.  If you’re doing that already you could look into your DCOM settings on both servers.  The second half of the PDF linked below deals with configuring DCOM.  You will need to have both the administrator account you are using and REMOTE LOGON set to allow both remote and local access.

http://thinmanager.com/technotes/13_Errors/XP_DCOM_Issues.pdf

-TM

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