Linux as a Substitute for Citrix Metaframe

[Ben Webb]

Your problem is really two staged:  getting prints/files from the win4lin session back to native 
linux, and getting the prints back to the user's machine.  First, let's deal with communication 
between the guest and host operating systems.   I don't know win4lin at all, so I'll describe the 
solutions if you were using vmware.  With vmware, you can "network" between the guest and host.  In 
your case this would mean running samba on the servers and allowing the win98 guests to map those 
drives.  Another thought might be to install win98 in a FAT partition, then mount the partition 
with linux (I don't know if you can do this while it's in use... this is all conceptual) and set up 
an "export folder".  Anything dropped in that folder would be acted on by a cron job that runs at 
some interval.  Print files could be printed and other files could be saved.  This would prevent 
you from having to run samba server on those machines.  

Second part: printing at the local user's machine.  Caveat: I don't reccomend this if the users 
aren't at least using NT.

The users would have to set up their machines as print servers.  They could do this either as lpd 
or as windows shared printers, your choice since you have to support it.  Once that is done, the 
Linux machines would have to connect the proper printer for each user when they logged in.  
Obviously if they set up windows shared printers this means the samba client(I'm pretty sure it can 
do this, once again I'm speculating :-)). 

Another thought is to hack vnc to add the functionality.  In any case, please keep at least myself 
updated on how this is going, It sounds like an interesting project.

Ben

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Forrest Dickinson <fdickinson at morganhunter.com>
Reply-To: kclug at kclug.org

>I am trying to setup a couple of linux servers as "windows terminal
servers". 
...
our end the servers access the internet via a T1.  The problem I am
having is they cannot print to their printers at home (of course they
can do a print screen or print to the printers at the office, but I need

more than that) and they cannot map to there own drives (the former is
more important than the latter).   If I could get this working I will
have saved my company several thousand dollars over the cost of a Citrix

product.  Any insight would greatly be appreciated.

--

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"They that can give up liberty in order to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                  -Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin R. Webb
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