MFCF Windows Terminal Server User's Guide
First Edition, Summer 2001
A Windows Terminal Server is a Windows server (NT 4 or Windows 2000) with
thin client capabilites. A typical Windows NT server or workstation
is limited to one user session at one console at any one time. A "Terminal
Server" is capable of running multiple NT user sessions on a single server
from multiple remote clients simultaneously. All software is stored on the
server an not on the client.
All session activity runs directly
on the server and not on the client.
In UNIX terminology, a Windows
Terminal Server could be described as a host. In Windows terminology, a Windows
Terminal Server is both application server and client.
The user's remote terminal is known as a "thin client". A thin client's
sole function is to display the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the user's
session and facilitate in comunication between the user and the server. The
terminal has no other purpose. One example of such a device is the NCD ThinSTAR
terminal.
A terminal server system has the following benefits.
- True Windows NT/2000 operating system and desktop environment.
- Direct access to a high powered Windows environment.
- Seemless integration with UNIX file space.
- Seemless integration with UNIX printing services.
- Low hardware maintenance costs.
- Ease in software installation and upgrades.
- Low software maintenance requiements for the client terminals.
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To begin a user must be running an X Window session. Therefore login
to one of the listed X terminals. In most cases an X Window session should
start soon after login. Once your X session has begun, there are two ways
to start a WinCentre session.
-
Enter the command wincentre (or wincenter or mef-nt) at any command prompt.
OR
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Using the left mouse button, click your mouse on a blank area of the X
desktop. The menu which appears will have the sub menu named "CPU Servers".
Select "mef-nt (WinCentre)" from the "CPU Server" sub menu.
This will initiate a new X Window on your desktop. Your WinCentre session
will run in this new window. WinCentre load balancing will determine which
NT server your session will run on and connect your X window to it. The
NT server to which you are then connected will then prompt you for your
userid and password. Enter the same undergrad UNIX userid and password
you entered when you logged into the X terminal.
Userids and passwords are case sensitive, make certain you type them
correctly. In particular, ensure that the Caps Lock key is not set otherwise
WinCentre will not be able to log you in. Also, make sure that the Domain
field says MATH-UG, you will not be able to log in unless this field says
MATH-UG.
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Desktop
The WinCentre desktop is a Windows NT4 desktop. That is, it looks very
similar to a Windows 95 desktop as seen below.
Start Button
By default, there is a bar at the bottom of all WinCentre sessions,
this is the Task Bar. At the far left of the Task Bar is a button marked
"Start". Click on this to gain access to all system applications and tools.
Most of what you will need will be found in the Programs group in the Start
button menu. NOTE: Material in the System Administration programme group
is restricted.
System Disks And User Disk Space
D: Drive
-
This is the system drive. This is the storage area for the operating system
and all software used in WinCentre. There is also storage space for
temporary files created by applications and for user profile caching.
Although users can write
to the temporary areas of the system disk, it is not a good idea to maintain
any personal or essential data in these locations since they can be cleared
without notice if disk space is needed.
User profile folders in particular are to be limited to 2 MB per user. Profiles
which grow significantly larger due to the storage of user work can have
detrimental effects on system and network performance. Such profiles may be
disabled or deleted without user notice.
Also since session load balancing
is in use a user can not pre-determine which WinCentre server (machine)
he will be logged into from one session to another.
P: Drive
-
This is your personal disk space for your WinCentre session. In most cases
it is maintained on a server called hooke and is in fact the same space
as your UNIX session disk space. This provides for the easy transferal
of files between the two systems. This is also your only permanent storage
space.
Things To Know About Storage Space
-
Every effort is made to ensure that WinCentre software stores personal
work to the P: drive by default. However it is the user's responsibility
to ensure that he is saving his work to his P: drive. Do not save to the
D: drive.
-
UNIX file systems do not accept file names with spaces in them (unlike
the NT file system). If you wish to use a file created by an NT session
in a UNIX session make certain that there are no spaces in the file or
folder names.
Printing
Printing of documents and data is accomplished in the same manner as
in any other Windows environment. Most applications have a File menu which
carries a Print option. Within that option the user may specify which printer
to use as well as other printing options. At the present time WinCentre
has access to only one group of printers. Undergraduate users may send
WinCentre print jobs to the Hewlett Packard printers in MC 3016. Users
must have an undergrad printing account and sufficient funds in their printing
account.
Software
The following Windows based applications are currently available on WinCentre.
-
Microsoft Office 97
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Word
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Excel
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PowerPoint
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Binder
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Access
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Visual Studio 6
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Visual C++
-
Visual Basic
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Visual FoxPro
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Visual InterDev
-
Internet Explorer 4.01
-
MathCad 2000 Professional
-
Sybase SQL Anywhere 5
- Rational Rose 98 - Enterprise Edition
- SPSS 10.1
- ALCOA - Alloy Constraint Analyzer 1.0
- Concurrency 1.1
- FractInt for Windows 18.21
- Xilinx Foundation 1.5
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.05
-
Microsoft Windows Accessories (e.g.. Calculator)
Copying Text To And From The X Desktop
Yes you can! WinCentre is capable of transferring text from an application
in WinCentre to an application running on your X desktop (or visa versa).
In each WinCentre session there is a process called UNIX Integration Services
(UIS) which starts after login. Part of UIS's job is to assist in the transferal
of information between the two desktops. The UIS Helper icon usually appears
in the status area of your session task bar (lower right corner of your
session desktop).
Transferring text from an X application or window to WinCentre...
-
On the X desktop, select the text. Move the cursor (mouse pointer) into
the WinCentre window. The UIS Helper icon will show a green arrow pointing
into a clipboard.
-
Paste the selection (using the Edit menu Paste) into the WinCentre application
Transferring text from WinCentre to an X application or window...
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In WinCentre, select the text. Choose cut or copy (in the Edit menu usually).
Move you cursor out of the WinCentre window and into the X desktop area.
The UIS Helper icon will show a red arrow pointing out of a clipboard.
-
Go to the required desktop application and paste your text using the paste
method native to the X desktop or application.
What Happens To Idle Users
All user sessions which have been idle for one hour are automatically
disconnected regardless of the saved state of the users work. This means
you can lose unsaved data and documents if you leave your terminal or ignore
your WinCentre session for longer than a reasonable length of time.
Logging Off
To log off of WinCentre, click on the Start button and select the Logoff...
option at the bottom of the menu list. You will be asked to confirm that
you wish to log off. Click OK. Clicking on Cancel will cause you to resume
your WinCentre session.
Logging off of WinCentre will not cause you to log off of your X Windows
session started previously. That requires a second logout. Similarly logging
out of your UNIX session does not cause your WinCentre session to logout,
it is merely disconnected.
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One of the benefits of WinCentre is that it is integrated into the undergrad
password database. User accounts are automatically created upon first login.
Thus any user who has a Math undergrad UNIX account may gain access to
the WinCentre system. You use the same userid and password to log into
a WinCentre session as you would use to log into your X terminal.
During this first login attempt you may receive
the following message after entering your password.
"Your domain account has been successfully created. However,
for you to log on to the domain, your BDC(s) must be synchronized with
the PDC. Please wait to logon until this has occurred or contact your system
administrator."
For each new user, this delay due to "synchronization" occurs only once
if it occurs at all. It takes anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes to complete.
Then you may log in to WinCentre.
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WinCentre Login
-
During the period after your account is created and the BDC server is updated
(as mentioned in the previous section), if a
user tries to login WinCentre will inform the user that "The system could
not log you on". This is a temporary state, the user just has to wait a
few minutes and then try logging in again.
-
Just after log in a user's session may suddenly terminate with the message "No Available Licenses
for Your Session".
In most cases there is an actual license available for the session. However Terminal Server session will wait to receive
a session license for only about 30 seconds before timing out. If the server is too busy, then it
can't get the license to the session in time.
In general, the solution to this problem is to simply start your session again.
-
After login and after the "Login in progress..." message appears, the WinCentre session can
abruptly terminate without a message or explanation.
This is sometimes due to WinCentre being unable to get permission to retrieve your WinCentre
profile folder from the profile server. Possibly because your NT password has been corrupted.
One course of action is to change your undergrad password on UNIX, this will cause an
update of your NT password on WinCentre the next time you login.
NOTE: It takes several minutes for an updated undergrad password to be distributed to all
undergrad servers. Wait about five minutes before using your new password at the WinCentre login.
Copy and Paste To/From Macintosh Desktops
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When using the clipboard to copy text from a WinCentre application to a Macintosh desktop,
a user may be successful at the first attempt. However the copied text will remain
in the clipboard and will be its output for all further copy/paste attempts from
WinCentre to the Macintosh. There is no error message.
In order to reset the clipboard the user must subsequently transfer text from
the Macintosh desktop to WinCentre.
Visual Studio
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Microsoft does not guarantee that Visual Basic will run perfectly in the
Terminal Server Edition version of Windows NT (WinCentre). In particular,
accessing the Help menu can cause a fatal error which will terminate the
programme without saving your work.
X Windows Display
-
Some of the older (black-and-white) NCD terminals can run out of memory
when starting or ending a WinCentre session. The result is a "Panic Failure"
which reboots the NCD terminal. The user will lose his session.
NOTE: This problem has become rather rare now.
-
WinCentre is not always able to acquire the correct colour depth of all
X terminals. The result can be screen flashing and colour inversion as
a user moves between other X Windows and his WinCentre session.
Printing
-
There is no known way to terminate a print job once it has been sent from
WinCentre to the print server (math).
-
There is no direct way to charge print jobs to accounts other than a user's
personal account. Microsoft's lpr printing software does not accept any
account specification or redirection.
For a work around to this problem please consult the page on
Creating a Postscript File in WinCentre
for directing a print job to a transferable Postscript file.
-
Printing to a postscript file can not be directly set up through WinCentre's print
services. By default, the system would store the resulting postscript files
in operational folders within the user's profile. This would result in
serious errors for the user as the system attempts to run these
non-executable files.
For a work around to this problem please consult the page on
Creating a Postscript File in WinCentre.
User Profile Permissions
-
All users are given Full Control permission over their profile folders. These folders
are loaded and unloaded by the WinCentre operating system during user login and
logout respectively. Full Control
gives the user the authority to change any and all other permissions associated with
his profile information. This includes access permissions for the operating system (seen
in the permissions list as SYSTEM). Since
it is the SYSTEM and not the user's account which handles profile loading and
unloading it is necessary for the SYSTEM to also have Full Control over a user's
profile folder. If a user changes the SYSTEM permissions on his profile folder, then
he may encounter registry errors during login and logout and may corrupt his
profile.
User Disk Space
-
Windows applications are rather disk space greedy. In spite of this user
disk quotas has not been increased for the present.
-
At the present time there is no way to determine your disk quota or remaining
disk space from within a WinCentre session.
The best way around this is to go to another window on your X desktop
and enter the command diskquota.
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A typical Windows NT maintenance practice is to reboot the server at least
once per week. The Terminal Server Edition of Windows NT is no different.
Maintenance reboots ensure that processes and sessions not properly terminated
do finally get killed. Unterminated processes can take up memory and processor
power. Reboots also restart any needed system processes which may have
failed.
In the case of WinCentre, reboots are managed so that user sessions
are not interrupted. All four servers are identical and load balanced.
When a server enters its time for scheduled reboot, the server stops accepting
new sessions, waits until all current users log off and then reboots itself.
During this period load balancing sends new WinCentre sessions to the other
operational servers. Therefore no interruption to service is expected.
Maintenance reboots are confined to off peak periods (2 am to 4 am) and
done one server per night. On average Terminal Server NTs take approximately
ten minutes to reboot.
In the event of a WinCentre server or servers being shutdown,
there are three cases.
-
When the exact time of a server shutdown is not critical, it is possible
to simply have load balancing send new WinCentre sessions to other available
servers. Then the Administrator will wait for the current users to
end their session. The server may then be shutdown at the convenience of
the Administrator. No interruption of user sessions is required.
Software installations and hardware upgrades are examples of when this
would be necessary.
-
When the exact time of a server shutdown is critical, then the shutdown
is forced. The users are notified that they have 1 hour to end their sessions.
During this period no new sessions are permitted. Users receive regular
warnings of the upcoming shutdown. Under these circumstances there would
be posted warnings a day in advance of the event.
Scheduled power outage is an example of when such a shutdown would
be required.
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Emergency Shutdowns. These are rare however they occur at short
notice.
Reboots and shutdowns of any WinCentre server do not necessarily effect
hooke where user disk space is stored.
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All users of computing facilities at UW should be aware of the Statement
on Use of University of Waterloo Computing and Network Resources. WinCentre
users should be aware of the MFCF
Account Usage Policy and understand that their WinCentre accounts are
provided to support academic related uses.
Each account holder is solely responsible for the use or misuse of
his computing privileges. Remember to change your password, keep it secret,
and do not share your account. Disciplinary actions will be taken in cases
of abuse. .
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This web page was last updated on Wednesday, the 16th day of May
in the year 2001 AD