stotti.blog()

a short link for reminiscence reasons: check out the FLButselector package, a framework to make sun ray kiosk/cam mode more flexible, assigning per-token and per-dtu default applications.

here are the techspecs:

As of current release, you can do quite a lot by assigning applications not only to “correctly” registered tokens, but to DTUs as well - in 4 other combinations of authorization (no token, unregistered token, registered token without “piped” fields and registered token pointing to a missing program).

You can also use the “Disabled” checkmark for tokens (i.e. lost or stolen) and define the script’s default policy about unknown/missing tokens.

It has been developed and successfully used under Solaris 10 SRSS3.1 CAM and SRSS4 9/07 + patch Kiosk modes. Notes/patches welcome for other platforms.

you can fetch it at cos.ru or at the sunray-users subversion repository.

finally it’s done: there is a new citrix client for solaris hosts based on x86 architecture. we’ve been waiting years for an updated version, now there is client v8.5 available:

click here to download the citrix client for solaris x86

huge thanks to citrix!

okay, time for more updates. as months went by, my usb mount/unmount script has been used by several sun ray admins, who have written me uplifting mails. thanks for your replies, dudes! but meanwhile daniel cifuentes came up with the “usb drive daemon” which i think is even better suited to fit your sun ray usb plugging needs. go check it out and use it in your sun ray environments!

its’ blog post is located at think thin, so please grab it there. several users have made improvements, so maybe you can pick up a solution you like or script it for yourself.

happy plugging, sun ray geeks!

i am now part of the great family of sun ray bloggers aggregated in planet sunray-users. there you can find a lot of very valuable information regarding the desktop products of sun microsystems. included in the list of authors are famous names like bob doolittle, the thinguy, brad lackey, pearley mears and the fat bloke. as i can see i am the only non-sun employee in this sun ray bunch.

you can expect more to come…

you have forgotten the password to the sun ray administrator interface? don't worry, this is a quick guide to retrieve it using some simple shell commands. the key to success is the file /etc/opt/SUNWut/utadmin.pw - it contains an ascii string which is the administrator password.
what, plain text passwords, you may ask? of course not... the string is "cyphered" by the rot13 algorithm. so you can get back the password by decrypting the mentioned string it with a rot13 tool.
you can do this on the web using this or this online tool or offline using the following bash script:

after retrieving the original password you can use it further or change it using the /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utpw command. it changes both passwords in the sun ray data store (srds) and the local file /etc/opt/SUNWut/utadmin.pw

good luck!

as promised here comes part two of the usb scripts for sun ray ultrathin-clients. this is yet simpler but fancier than the mount script because it uses zenity to display the result of the unmounting operation.

so this is what you should get after executing the script:

of course there is an appropriate dialog if something fails.

by the way i have recognized that the scripts do work only if executed in a terminal. to make sure that it is run in a terminal use the checkbox in the starters' preferences dialog. to be true i don't know why this is necessary.

please let me know if you find some errors while using this script. i'ld love to know if it helps you in your sun ray environment. leaving a comment would be nice. thanks!

as you all know the sun ray ultrathin-clients support several types of devices connected to them, including serial and parallel devices, usb mass storage, pdas and so on. for a full list see the sun ray admin guide, chapter four. now when a usb mass storage device gets plugged in, the sun ray services mount it to /tmp/SUNWut/mnt/[username]/disk[integer]/. the user then needs to traverse the file system to get into the named directory which is applicable but quite a strange behavior for people who got used to windows (plug in usb-stick and it gets mounted as a lokal partition, then the user gets notified of it). because of this i have thought of a possibility to decrease user concerns and increase their positive experiences. yesterday i did a quick hack to check for mounted usb devices, link them to the users home directory and open a file browser to display the linked directory.

the script has a pitfall yet, because it supports only one usb device per user. so if the user connects two or more usb mass storage devices (should happen rarely) the scripts fails. i plan to code an option the select the desired device. perhaps some of my fellow readers want to supply this so i don't have to code it?

btw. using this script you have to unmount devices after usage of course. i will come up with the according script later.

another reminder for me and for all who want to know which video specs the "new" sun ray 2 virtual display clients support:

• sun ray 2: 1600x1200 max at 32bit
• sun ray 2fs: 1900x1200 max at 32bit, supports dual monitor setups (so each screen supports 1900x1200 pixels)

and yes, you can still use your old vga monitors with the new sun ray thin clients. all you need is an dvi-to-vga adaptor (included in each sun ray 2 box).

craig bender blogs on reducing sun ray server load by setting some simple values in the sun ray config. this results in faster startup times. here's a quick abstract on what the sun ray engineering guys did:

• Increase Authd worker threads from 8 to 32
• Change utprodinfo to do an echo vs. a pkginfo
• Use non-invasive methods for finding the Sun Ray MAC address or other information from the data store
• Remove dtsession as a CAM application if not required
• Increase the initial and max heap size for Authd

how to do this? read craigs entry on the think thin blog. after all this shows us that sun ray engineering is no black magic. i can't wait to try this out....

i'm just mentioning it here so i won't forget it again... which will likely happen in about five minutes up to four hours - depends on the distraction level i'm forced with tonight.

as we all know the sun ray 2fs virtual display comes with a copper and fiber-optical port for networking. i was just searching for the specs of the fiber port again, and it turns out that the sun ray 2fs comes with a "mt-rj" type optical connector which connects to a 100base-fx fiber network. had to write this down so i won't forget it!

just to make it clear: the sun ray does not support a hot failover if you plug in both connectors (rj45 for copper and mt-rj for fiber). it will take the first it gets hold of and then turns off the other port! if you plan to have both options on your desk to swap in case of one going down you're forced to restart the unit to get the other port working.

the image is courtesy of www.networkcables.com