Remote Session Startup Programs

In a typical environment, a user connects to a central server in the server room through her desktop or laptop at her own cubicle, or even at her home. Once connected, this establishes a remote session from the user’s machine to the central server.

In Windows environment, this is usually done either through Microsoft’s Terminal Services or through Citrix’s servers (such as the Presentation Server). Certain programs are run right after establishing the remote session. These programs are stored in the registry of the central server.

Microsoft uses rdp, their proprietary protocol, for remote connection. And rdp stands for Remote Desktop Protocol.

Citrix uses their proprietary protocol ica for remote connection. And ica stands for Independent Computing Architecture.

For Microsoft Terminal Services, the registry key is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\Wds\rdpwd\StartupPrograms

For Citrix, the registry key is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\Wds\icawd\StartupPrograms

Wd means working directoriy (and Wds means, of course, working directories).

The StartupPrograms key is of string (REG_SZ) type. This key contains a list of programs to be run at remote session startup. The programs are separated by commas. Or the techies would like to call it a “comma-delimited list”.

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Bug Report: Email Printout in UniPrint (Update)

We posted a bug report about sending out printout from UniPrint using its emailing feature previously.

Of course, we do not have the source code – we have not even seen any UniPrint source code for that matter – so we won’t be able to know for sure if that’s the problem.

We spoke to our internal developers. They suspected that the EnableSsl property of the smtp client instance has not been set to true. If it is, our internal developers said the bug should be an easy one to fix. You just need to add one line of code.

Hope that the UniPrint developers take note of this.

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Bug Report: Email Printout in UniPrint

Scenario:
Our previous article (How to use the email feature in UniPrint?) shows you how to set up and use the nice feature in UniPrint that lets you email your printout to someone directly when you print to the Uniprint printer. The setup was based on not checking the Server requires authentication checkbox.

 

However, because of security reasons, email servers nowadays seldom forfeits authentication prior to sending an email. So check the Server requires authentication checkbox now, and a window pops up, asking for credentials. Fill in the user, password, and confirm the password, then click OK. If you need to change the credentials later, just click the Set credentials button.

 

Now log on to the UniPrint Server via a remote session (Microsoft’s Terminal Services RDP connection, or Citrix’s ICA connection. Open up a document (or type something in Notepad), and click print. When the printer dialogue shows up, select the Uniprint printer (if you have more than one printer installed), and click the preferences button. The Uniprint driver dialogue box show up.

 

Click the Email tab. Fill in all the fields, or at least the TO: field, and click OK to close the UniPrint Driver dialog box. Next click Print on the Printer dialog box. Then you’ll get this error message box: UniPrint was unable to send your document to the desired recipients.

 

Versions Affected:
This bug has been confirmed to occur in UniPrint Server 6.1.5, and is expected to occur in all previous versions of 6.x.

Workarounds:
None at this time.

Updates:
None at this time.

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How to Test FTP Printers?

We talked about what FTP printers are. But how do you know that a printer is an FTP printer? Or a better question, how do you know that an FTP printer is actually working?

Essentially, the question is: How to test FTP printers? The following steps show you how:

Let’s assume:

1. we have a Lexmark printer model T630, which is supposed to be an FTP printer;
2. we are running Windows (any newer version of Windows) on our PC, and
3. the Lexmark T630 printer is connected to our Windows PC not via a direct cable, but via a network path.

Let’s further assume that the machine name for this Lexmark T630 is LEX630, and its ip address is 192.168.1.10. We need either piece of information to print to it.

1. Open a command Windows. (To do this: Click Start button -> Run, and type in cmd in the open box, and click OK.)

2. Next, we need to reassure ourselves that our PC can actually “talk” to the printer. We use the ping command.

   In the command window, type
     ping LEX630
   

   If it comes back to say something like
     Ping request could not find host LEX630
   it means that perhaps our name server is not set up properly, but let’s not worry about it now.

   Instead, we turn to the printer’s ip address, which we try to ping:
     ping 192.168.1.10
   

   If it comes back with:
     Pinging 192.168.1.10 with 32 bytes of data:
     Reply from 192.168.1.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=254
   that means success; our PC and “talk” to the printer directly. But if it comes back with:
     Pinging 192.168.1.10 with 32 bytes of data:
     Request timed out.
     Request timed out.
   that means problems, usually hardware and/or network problems. Troubleshooting it is beyond the scope of this article. We just assume that we are successful in establishing connection between our PC and the printer, and we move on with our experiment.

3. Next, let’s further assume that we have a valid pdf file called test.pdf in our temp folder. Still inside the command window, type:
     cd %temp%
   

   The %temp% is a variable that represents the actual path to our temp folder. Windows will translate the variable %temp% and set our default folder to our temp folder. And we can do the test to make sure that test.pdf is actually here. Type:
     dir test.pdf

4. Now it’s the exciting part: We are actually going to ftp into the printer. Still in the same command window, type:   >ftp 192.168.1.10
   

   It comes back with:
     Connected to 192.168.1.10
     220 Lexmark T630 FTP Server 55.0.39 ready.
     User:
   

   Please note that the exact wording may vary on different implementations of the FTP server by different vendors.

5. Here it’s asking for a user account. FTP printers should have an anonymous account, so type “anonymous”. This account usually does not require a password. We should see something like this:
     230 User anonymous logged in.
   

   Some implementations do require a password, a common password to use is “guest”. If not, the password is usually given in the response after we typed in “anonymous” like:
     Use welcome as password.

   If we see the prompt becomes
     ftp>
   that means we have successfully logged in to the FTP server (or the printer in our case).

6. Here comes the meat: we are to transfer test.pdf file directly to the printer. In the ftp prompt, type:
     ftp> put test.pdf
   

   We should see responses like:
     200 PORT command successful.
     150 Opening ASCII data connection.
     226 Transfer complete. 9375 bytes sent.
   

   The printer then prints out our pdf file.

7. To exit the ftp program, type “bye” at the ftp prompt.

And this concludes our little experiment on testing FTP printers.

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What are FTP Printers?

What is FTP?

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which is one of the standard protocols used on the internet. FTP is specifically for transferring files from one machine to another over the internet originally, now via any network.

Some printer vendors (like HP and Lexmark) manufacture FTP printers. These printers have a little built-in FTP engine that accepts PDF (Portable Document Format) file as print jobs and prints them.

The printers will also have a built-in pdf engine to render print jobs to actual physical paper output. Thus individual computers do not need to have the printer driver for that particular model installed in order to print properly.

Based on a similar principle, UniPrint’s universal printer driver basically converts (through some third-party PDF engine) the output of a document’s printing function to a pdf file and sends it to the printer for rendering. The 3rd-party pdf engine UniPrint driver uses is Amyuni (for all versions of Uniprint's core products) and Foxit (for the newer versions of UniPrint's core products).

How do you know that a printer is an FTP printer? Or a better question, how do you know that an FTP printer is actually working?

Essentially, the question is: How to test FTP printers? Read on.

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UniPrint Host Edition licensing

UniPrint Host Edition enables user to print from host systems (such as Sun’s Solaris, IBM’s AS/400, Linux, etc.) to their Windows desktop machines.

UniPrint Host Edition uses a totally different licensing model from the core UniPrint SbC products or UniPrint VDI Edition. UNiPrint Host Edition uses per usage licensing, and the usage in the Host Edtition is number of pages printed.

You will need the following information to generate a UniPrint Host Edition license file:

• The machine name on which UniPrint Host Server is be installed. (You need to install the Host Edition first prior to requesting a Host Edition license.)
• The IP address of the machine above.
• A serial number that you obtained from your supplier (a reseller, a distributor, or the vendor).
• Install Code: This information is available only after you installed the software. So, you need to install the software first, and record the install code from the UniPrint management console.
• The number of pages you are licensed to print.

As of writing, the initial value for the number of pages in a Host Edition license is 60,000 pages, and you can order additional bundles in increments of 10,000 pages.

All these values will be reset at the beginning of the calendar year. For example, let’s say you have a 60,000-page license and you used up 56,000 pages by December 31 of the year. Comes January 1 of next year, and you’ll get your full 60,000 pages back for the entire year. However, you cannot carry the remaining 4,000 pages into next year so that you can have 64,000 pages in your reserve.

You can set it up in the Host Edition management console so that you’ll receive notifications through emails when you approach within a certain percentages (e.g., 10%, 5%) of the limit of your license.

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How to find out machine name and IP address?

As you need the machine name and IP address in order to request a valid license, you need to know how to find out the information. There are several ways to find out the name and the IP address of your machine.

The easiest way is from a command window. To open a command window, click Start -> Run, then in the Open box, type cmd, and click OK. In the command window, type hostname to see the name of your machine, and type ipconfig to see the IP address of your machine.

Click here to see a larger image.

You can also find out the machine name by right-clicking My Computer (on the desktop or on the Start menu), and then choose Properties, then click on the Computer Name tab.

Click here to see a larger image.

If you cannot see My Computer on your desktop, right-click on the blank area of the desktop, click Properties, then click the Desktop tab, then click the Customize Desktop button. Click OK to exit.

If you cannot see My Computer on your Start menu, right-click the Start button, click Properties, click the Start Menu tab, click the Customize button. Another dialog window shows. On this window, click the Advanced tab. In the middle part about Start menu items, scroll down to find My Computer, then choose either Display as a link, or Display as a menu. Click OK to exit.

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SbC products licensing

UniPrint’s core products seamlessly support printing in Server-based Computing (SbC) environments. All these products are to be installed on a server platform such as Microsoft’s Servers 2000, 2003 and 2008, or Citrix Metaframe Server and Presentation Server.

These core products include 32-bit products:

• UniPrint Server
• UniPrint Server Gateway Edition
• UniPrint Terminal Server Edition
• UniPrint Terminal Server Gateway Edition

All these core products have their 64-bit counterparts, and the product name is suffixed by “x64” to the corresponding product:

• UniPrint Server x64
• UniPrint Server Gateway Edition x64
• UniPrint Terminal Server Edition x64
• UniPrint Terminal Server Gateway Edition x64

Products with names that have “Terminal Server” works only in Microsoft’s Terminal Services environments, i.e., with the RDP protocol. Products without such in their names also work in Microsoft’s Terminal Services environments, i.e., with the RDP protocol, and in addition, they also work in Citrix environments with the ICA protocol.

The following information is required to generate a license file:

• The machine name on which UniPrint Server is/will be installed.
• The IP address of the machine above.
• Environment: RDP only or ICA (ICA license includes RDP, so RDP can run on ICA license).
• Platform: 32-bit support or 64-bit support (64-bit license includes 32-bit support, so 32-bit platform can run on 64-bit license).
• A serial number that you obtained from your supplier (a reseller, a distributor, or the vendor).

From the above information, you’ll know that when you request a license, you need to have the machine name and the IP address ready, because the license is tied to those two pieces of information.

The licensing model for UniPrint’s core products (i.e., the SbC products) is per server, not per user (or per concurrent users). In other words, each UniPrint server will require its own valid license. Once a UniPrint server has its own valid license, there is no limitation from the licensing perspective as to how many users can connect to the UniPrint server.

This model of licensing is applicable to UniPrint’s SbC products (both Gateway and non-Gateway versions) up the latest release version 6.1.5 (as of writing).

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UniPrint license

All UniPrint products are available for free download. When you download any of these products, they are fully functional except that there is a banner / watermark printed diagonally across the printout. (The only exception is UniPrint client software, which is a complementary product to the core products.)

You can request a temporary license that expires in a predetermined date, usually within 30 or 60 days. With the temporary license, you can evaluate the UniPrint product of your interest, and it behaves exactly the same as the fully licensed version. When you are ready to order, you need to call a reseller or a distributor to get a license key.

The steps in applying a temporary license for evaluation is the same as applying a regular license. You will receive in email, as attachment, a license key in the form of a text file with file extension .txt. You will have to rename the extension to a .reg registry file. Some email server or client programs are very vigilant about receiving .reg file as attachments that they may strip off the attachment altogether. That is why the license key file will be sent as plain text file, and you’ll have to rename it back to .reg file.

You need to save the renamed .reg file onto the machine where UniPrint Server is installed. Then you just need to double-click the file to put the license in place.

This applies to the Server-based Computing (SbC) core products up to and including version 6.1.5. Licensing for other products will be discussed in another article.

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Why do you need to reboot after installing UniPrint Server?

After you install UniPrint Server, you need to reboot the system in order for it to take effect. But you don’t need to restart the system with Spool Server or Print Server. Why?

When you connect to the UniPrint Server through a remote session, for example, through Microsoft Terminal Services (MS TS) RDP or Citrix ICA connections, the UniPrint program LogScript (LogScrpt.exe) has to be launched to establish virtual channel.

When MS TS starts, it automatically launches all programs listed in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\Wds\rdpwd\StartupPrograms

The regkey StartupPrograms contains startup programs separated by commas. There should be at least one program there, and it’s rdpclip. After installing UniPrint Server, it should also contain LogScrpt.

The program rdpclip.exe is a Microsoft program used by TS. This program resides in %windir%\System32 (usually it’s C:\WINDOWS\System32), so it should not be a problem for Windows to find this program.

On the other hand, the LogScript program (LogScrpt.exe) resides usually in C:\Program Files\UniPrint Suite\Common Files. But how does Windows know where to find it?

One of the ways that Windows finds a program is to look at the environment variable PATH in the system table, which contains a list of paths for finding programs separated by semi-colons. A typical PATH, after installing UniPrint Server, may look like this:
C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\UniPrint Suite\Common Files

Since PATH is a system level environment variable, its content is set only at system startup. Any changes to its content after system startup won’t take effect. For the changes to take effect, one has to simply reboot the machine.

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UniPrint products overview

With the current buzzword of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), or in the more arcane IT vocabulary of Server-based Computing (SbC), you won't miss this keyword: UniPrint. Why? Simply because they are a key player.

Their products enhance VDI printing and SbC printing in Citrix as well as Microsoft terminal Server platforms. Their products are indispensable in helping system administrators manage and solve printing problems.

The following are their product offerings:

• UniPrint Server – A core product of UniPrint for fat-client printing. A special version, UniPrint Terminal Server Edition, works specifically in the Microsoft Terminal Server platform, but not in the Citrix platform.


• UniPrint Gateway Edition – The core product with extended capability for thin-client printing. There is also a special version, UniPrint Gateway Terminal Server Edition, that works specifically in the Microsoft Terminal Server platform, but not in the Citrix platform.


• UniPrint VDI Edition – This product tailors specifically for printing in a Virtual Desktop Infrasturcture (VDI) environment such as that offered by VMware.


• UniPrint Host Edition – This product enables flexible printing from non-Windows host systems (e.g., mainframes and legacy systems as well as Unix boxes) to Windows desktops.

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INDEX

• UniPrint products overview
• Why do you need to reboot after installing UniPrint Server?
• UniPrint license
• SbC products licensing
• How to find out machine name and IP address?
• UniPrint VDI Edition licensing
• UniPrint Host Edition licensing
• A Brief History of UniPrint
• Startup Programs
• What are FTP Printers?
• How to Test FTP Printers?
• How to Set Up FTP Printer with UniPrint Spool Server?
• Bug Report: UniPrint Server 6.1.5
• Bug Report: UniPrint Host Edition 6.1.4
• Search Engines Take Note: Do Not Search UniPrint
• How to Use the Email Feature in UniPrint?
• Bug Report: Email Printout in UniPrint
• Bug Report: Email Printout in UniPrint (Update)
• UniPrint License and Banner
• UniPrint Plagiarizes? Copycat?
• UniPrint's New Website
• UniPrint and .Net
• LPR/LPD Printing
• What’s New in UniPrint Version 7?
• UniPrint Version 7 Licensing
• Bug Report: UniPrint 7
• Printing from Unix to Windows (Part 1)
• Printing from Unix to Windows (Part 2)

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