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Reliable Citrix Printing

Contrary to common belief, Citrix printing CAN be reliable.

The following steps will guide you in attaining that.

The environment is Windows 2003 Server, Xenapp 4.5, and a wire array of clients; standard metaframe server.

So, probably a dumb question – what is the print spooler. Keep in mind that with this excercise we are looking to tie in the windows spooler and citrix spooler service.

The considerations are:

  1. The printing policy
  2. Native/Non-native drivers
  3. Discovering and Eliminating unreliable drivers
  4. Deleting faulty drivers
The printing policy:
  • Auto creation – Auto create all client printers
  • Print job routing: If you have a print server this will help skip another loop.
  • Native driver auto-install. This determines if your server will get cluttered with bad drivers in the long run. Do not automatically install drivers.
  • Universal driver: Use the Citrix Universal Print Driver:
Native/Non Native Drivers:
The best practice with drivers is to avoid both if Citrix was questioned. In real life, most environments will have a few native/non-native drivers which you HAVE to install. This is usually due to photocopier options, security and in general just something the Citrix Universal print driver does not handle.
BUT – We also need to make sure these drivers are safe and will not compromise stability.
This is a two part process, A. ensuring whether the driver in question is native (preferred), B. making sure the driver is reliable.
For this we need to two tools:
  1. Citrix’s Stress Tools – this will work on all windows environments and can be found in 32&64 bit flavours.
    This ZIP will need to be extracted to a local drive on the server you’re looking to test.
  2. Citrix’s Print Detective – this will also need to run locally.
Print Detective
  1. You will use this to identify what drivers are native or otherwise. Run the application from where you unzipped it. Right click and “Show Non-Native/Non-Citrix drivers only”.
  2. The main aim is to test the Drivers identified in step 1. Yes I know, there are some Microsoft printers in there, doing this exercise is adhering with Citrix’s guidelines and these drivers we “should” test.
Stressing the server
  1. Run your Stress Printer application from where you unzipped it.
  2. The options you need to look at are “The number of concurrent add events”, 5 is recommended, and “The number of times to repeat the test”, 5 as well. “Verbose mode” and “Apply these settings to all printers”  will need to be checked. The selected printers will be the ones we identified in the previous paragraph.
  3.  Ignore Warnings in the log. You are looking for 0 Errors.
Deleting Faulty drivers
  1. The identified faulty drivers will need deletion.
  2. Go to Start, Printers and Faxes, on the top right click on File, Server properties,  then choose the drivers tab. Select the appropriate driver then “Remove”

You now have a stable Citrix printing environment.

I intend on putting this up as pdf soon.

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remote access how to

remote access how to – We saw previously ONE method to log off a user, that was the clean way of gaining remote desktop.
There is another way, a dirty way but it works none-the-less, and gains your remote desktop:

This approach gives you remote access (sitting in front of the machine/console). Add the /Admin switch in the mstsc box.

Additional to this, you will approach also has the ability of allowing you to install some programs that will only install via console.

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Boat Restore: Part 2

So, Along with the few days of sun and work aside, I managed to put a little bit of into the boat.

This edition: Body work.

Cleanup

The rear fin – This required a fair about of chopping back because of the amount of damage from the drop.
Most grinders will work in this situation, however, remember about the balance of power versus handling.

Patchup: Internal Rear Fin

Before being able to do any external work, the inside needed strengthening, however this was also the tricky part because the work needs to be done upside-down to maintain the original shape of the fin.
To account for this I weighed down the boat with a very *convenient* marble table that happened to break with the last big earthquake.

The internal work called for some quick drying, so instead of making a rock-hard mix, I waited for a nice warm day. This seems to help in terms of the resin having the drying effects of very rich a-mixture.

Patchup: External Rear Fin

After the complete cleanup the fun work begun (fiber)!
The one easy way to avoid a dirty/finish was to keep replacing the brush every hour or so (try those cheap Chinese knock-offs), they work pretty well.

Cleanup: Seat supports

Like every boater will tell you before purchasing a new boat, take an expert along. That is what I did not do.
Note the condition of the supports before beginning work on them:
Hope you love tedious gentle cleanup.

Repair: Seat Supports

Be weary of what you remove from the compromised fiber, you will need anything that will deteriorate, however make sure you leave enough to mold your new fiber over.
Surrounding paint was removed for good contact with the hull. Sorry I was not about to take pictures of the application of fiber. The pictures below show the product cleaned up and with the first layer of fiber.

Cleanup: Outboard Mount

The boat originally came with some rotting wood the age of your grandpa’. This called for a new engine mount.
In this situation, some treated plywood was just sitting around in the garage – thank you very much – the cheap part.
The expensive part came in the form of a nice set of stainless bolts.

Note the Before picture.

Because I already removed cleared out the rear the opportunity came along to put fix the two bottom bolts in resit + fiber.
Note the two lower bolts just below the new front-facing support.

The end result looks a little something like this.

For us here it is the end of summer so the continuation of this project will have to wait a bit…

Thank you for your time.