[Thinlinc-technical] Praise, and questions ...

[Peter Åstrand]

> Greetings, and a happy new year to the Cendio staff and to the listmembers!

Thanks! Please see comments inline.


> I've been using TL Version 4.0.0 (build 3705) on Debian Wheezy in my
> small office environment on IGEL UD clients and connecting to the office
> server from home since a few weeks, and so far am very pleased with the
> overall performance. The agent is running with
>
> # -br -nolisten tcp -localhost -KeyboardMap=de (thanks again, Peter!)
>
> So, first of all, kudos for a very good product!

Glad to hear!


> Nevertheless, some experiences gave rise to questions. Perhaps I just
> need a hint or two to resolve something, or a bug report or wish-list
> item needs to be created? Here goes:
>
> 1) a couple times I tried to reconnect from one location to a session I
> had interrupted at the other location only to find out that both Master
> and Agent were no longer running. The closest I got in terms of Bugzilla
> was #4380 but I am not running Ubuntu but Debian Wheezy on the server,
> and Master and Agent were not restarted but were just not running any
> more. Any hint how to debug this?

This is probably this bug:

https://www.cendio.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4471

The workaround is to remove "&> /dev/null" from 
/etc/logrotate.d/thinlinc-vsm-agent and 
/etc/logrotate.d/thinlinc-vsm-server . Can you try this?



> 2) Keyboards: with "-KeyboardMap=de" as long as I stay with the same
> model, it works. Logged in from the Debian software client on my Dell
> laptop the session is unusable as only part of the keys provide expected
> behavior. Would I need to use a laptop with an exact same version of
> -KeyboardMap=de which was modeled after a standard USB keyboard? Might
> make TL a bit difficult to use for road warriors with German keyboards
> on their laptops, if I am not mistaken.

In general, the -KeyboardMap option is only necessary with some special 
applications that looks at raw keycodes. This includes VirtualBox. Even in 
this case, it should not matter which keyboard you use on the client side. 
So, I'm a bit surprised that it does not work for you from your laptop. 
Can you give an example of a key that does not work?


> 3) any plans/chance that a Sun Type 7 keyboard in German could be added
> to the keyboard maps? I like their F13-F20 and sound volume and on/off keys.

Such non-standard symbols (keysyms) "should" work: If the server (Xvnc) 
recieves such a keysym, it should automatically add it to the keyboard 
map, and allocate a keycode for it. Since you are asking, I assume it 
doesn't work? Which application are you running in the TL session, and 
does it work locally on the client?


> 4) external drives: the IGEL's "custom" partition that I registered in
> the TL client's options gets recognized and displayed. When I plug a USB
> pendrive into the IGEL it gets auto-mounted there on /media/<usbdevice>
> but the thindrives directory of my user account on the TL server
> (KDE4.8.4' dolphin) does not get updated. It even loses the previously
> seen "custom" partition while the USB device does not get registered.

The current functionality only allows static shares/exports. Ie, you 
configure the client to export, say /aa/bb/dd. In this case, you will get 
~/thindrives/dd on the server (and a "dd" drive if you connect to a 
Windows Remote Desktop).

For removable devices such as USB pendrives, there are two solutions:

1) Make sure that the exported path is always the same. For example, on my 
Windows laptop, the first USB device is always D:, so I can export that. 
In TLCOS, it is always /media/usbdisk0, if I remember correctly.

For IGEL, the default client configuration is to export /autofs/storage0. 
Doesn't this work?

2) Another solution is to export the parent folder, ie /media. Might be 
some limtations on when this is possible, though.


> 5) Sound recording: with a Plantronics headset with 3.5mm plugs I can

I'll answer all Sound related questions in a separate email!


> 9) A native connection, i.e., one that does not use SSH, over the LAN
> does not work here. Maybe I am missing a setting I would need to change?

Yes, you need to remove -localhost from xserver_args. This is admittely a 
bit confusing. Please note that we really recommend to use SSH. Support 
for sessions without encryption will likely be removed in future ThinLinc 
versions.


> As an aside - scanning with saned over the network works very well. I
> found out which version of the saned binary to install on the IGEL's
> custom partition, and it bypasses the TL setup which is ok in my trusted
> environment.

Cool.

Rgds, 
---
Peter Åstrand		ThinLinc Chief Developer
Cendio AB		http://cendio.com
Teknikringen 8		http://twitter.com/ThinLinc
583 30 Linköping	http://facebook.com/ThinLinc
Phone: +46-13-214600	http://plus.google.com/112509906846170010689