Microsoft,Networking,Printing,SCO_OSR5,Visionfs
Visionfs on SCO Unix
When the SCO operating systems were sold to Caldera, Visionfs
remained owned by Tarantella (the company that was SCO). Therefore,
Visionfs is no longer a free product. I recommend using Samba
instead, and I'd recommend using it on Linux, not SCO.
However, should you find yourself on an old SCO machine, Visionfs is probably in /usr/vision/bin (you might want to add that to $PATH for root). Quick start:
cd /usr/vision/bin
./visionfs --help will display the first level of commands
./visionfs status will display interesting information including the connected users.
./visionfs setup will configure it.
Visionfs puts your SCO box into the Network Neighborhood of your
Windows machines. This lets your Windows users use the SCO machine
for file space and also gives them access to Unix printers. Nothing
needs to be installed on the Windows machines; it's all on the
server.
Visionfs was included with both Unixware 7 and Openserver. With
Unixware, it installs automatically; Openserver 5.0.4 and 5.0.5
(3.2v5.0.4/5) require a separate install.
I'm already installed and licensed, skip to
configuration.
Do you have the latest version?
Update: You may be out of luck. I don't know of anywhere that you can
get this any longer. The Xinuous product pages say Visionfs is "not available".
The latest version includes support for the Unix machine
being an SMB client (seeing Windows shares from the Unix box). It
also lets you set up roaming profiles just as you would if you were
using NT- in fact, you can tell the Windows machines that they are
logging on to an NT domain! The new version does not require
licensing when installed on 5.0.4 and greater.
Patches are important! The 3.0 version had a print bug
which caused it to lose print jobs greater than 2872 characters.
That was fixed with a supplement ( see ftp://stage.sco.com/vision/VisionFS
Note that for 5.0.4 you do not install from the Vision CD
thoughtfully packed with your distribution. Instead, you mount the
OS installation CD and install from that. See http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108277
if you accidentally did install from the Vision CD.
OpenServer 5.0.4 requires RS504C: http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?105811
The 5.0.5 release includes specific directions for installing
Visionfs.
There are several things that can prevent a successful install.
First, you can't run AFPS or LAN Manager Client. See http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108209
for directions on that.
Next, netbios can't run. I think the Unixware install takes care
of that automatically, but on Openserver you'll need to do:
netbios stop
mv /etc./rc2.d/S86netbios /etc/rc2.d/s86netbios
If S86netbios doesn't exist, vi /etc/netbios and add an "exit 0"
at the top.
Check that your hostname is correct by trying
or
If these don't work, Visionfs won't license (latest versions on
Unixware and OSR5 do not need licensing).
See http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108271
for other suggestions.
On Unixware, the automatic process installs a fully licensed
version. On 5.0.4, you need to license the product separately (this
is no longer true- the 3.x versions do not need to be licensed).
The documentation implies that you get a chance to do this during
the install; if this is correct I've somehow managed to miss that
opportunity so far. To license after the fact, you need to run
/usr/vision/bin/visionfs license
NONE OF THAT APPLIES TO CURRENT VERSIONS ON OSR5 and
UNIXWARE!
There are numerous things that can keep this from working, the
most likely of which would be a misconfiguration of TCP/IP. One
simple test is to run
ping `hostname`
(note that those are backquotes: the left leaning single quote
usually found under the "~" on your keyboard)
If this doesn't work, the visionfs license server won't be
running, and you won't be able to license the product. In this
case, either your hostname is wrong or you don't have proper
routing to yourself (route add yourbox 127.0.0.1 should fix
that).
After getting things running on
the Unix side, the machine should start to show up in Network
Neighborhood on the Windows machines. Keep in mind that there are
timing issues here: without a reboot it may take a few minutes for
the Unix box to appear. Even with rebooting every machine on the
network, it still may take a few minutes, so go have a
break.
To speed things up, shoose "Start->Run" and just type the
name of the Sco server preceded by two backslashes:
Once it does appear, you may have password issues. I'll cover
some of them below, but if you run into trouble, I suggest you just
access SCO's search pages,
select "Visionfs" and search for "password".
Some articles of particular concern are:
http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108198
for NT
http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?109220
for Win95
Other issues involve Security levels and length of password: See
http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108227
and http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?108108
and
Things you need to understand about Windows
passwords:
A windows user can have a password. That password may or
may not be used for authentication. Whether or not it logs onto an
NT domain depends on the setting in the Network portion of control
panel.
If it isn't logging into a domain, the password is still
used to authenticate network connections such as
Visionfs.
The password on the windows machine and the password on
Visionfs can be different, though it is easier if they are the
same. More on this below.
If you configure a share to allow guest access, the Windows
users won't need to have a password to access it.
Configure the Windows machines as "Client for Microsoft
Networks". This gives you the opportunity to assign a Windows login
and password that matches your Unix login, which makes things far
less confusing.
Once you've done that, you have a choice on the Windows shutdown
menu that lets you close all programs and login as a different
user. This is an easy way to gain access to the Administrator's
programs which give you a Windows based way to configure
Visionfs.
When you ran the Visionfs setup program, you assigned a
Visionfs Administrator-probably root. If you don't know who you
assigned, run /usr/vision/bin/visionfs setup again.
If you have a user who can't get Visionfs shares to
appear, you can either connect as the Visionfs administrator and
use the Windows Visionfs Profile Editor (it's in the Visionfs
share) or use the Unix command line method (covered below) to
change their password).
Visionfs has 3 possible ways to authenticate passwords: it can
use plain-text Unix passwords, encrypted Windows passwords, or it
can pass authentication off to an NT server.
If you use Unix passwords, and are running Windows 98 or Windows
95 with certain patches, or Windows NT, you will need to run
"regedit" and add a DWORD Value to allow plain text passwords::
open
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->System->CurrentControlSet->Services->VXD.
Highlight VNETSUP, and then Edit, Add DWORD. Name it
"EnablePlainTextPassword", and then modify it to have a value of
"1".
For Windows 2000, wayne_v@my-deja.com offered this:
As you'd have to do that on every Windows machine, it's better
to use one of the other methods. Passing it off to an NT server
takes the SCO box right out of the loop: if NT says the user is OK,
then SCO believes it. Using encrypted Windows passwords requires
more initial setup:
First, run /usr/vision/bin/visionfs password --wizard. This lets
you import Unix users into the Visionfs password database. You can
assign them a blank password, a random password, make everybody's
password the same, or make their password match their Unix name.
I'd suggest making every password the same or matching their user
name initially.
You really want to use encrypted passwords if you possibly
can.
If Windows users already have passwords (remember, even if they
don't have any authentication, they can have passwords), you've got
a couple of ways to handle this:
Change the Windows password (Start->Settings->Control
Panel->Passwords)
Let them change their Visionfs password after they connect to
the visionfs share (they'll need the password you assigned to do
this, of course).
Change the users password from the Unix command line. For
example, to change "tom" to have password "2long2no", you'd run
Note that unless you ran the password wizard, a user won't have
a Visionfs password. Add it like this:
Dynamic bring-up and Visionfs
By default, Visionfs broadcasts on the network. If you have a
dynamic outgoing ppp link on the same server, the broadcasts keep
your dynamic ppp up even if otherwise idle. The Visionfs server
"scobox" can be modified using Profile Editor to disable naming
(Profile Editor-Server-Edit->Properties->Advanced->Disable
Naming). This will stop the broadcast, but it will now be
impossible for any windows machine to access "scobox" unless they
have persistent network drives mapped to it, or run "//scobox" from
the File menus, and have an Lmhosts file referencing
"scobox":
If the IP address of "scobox" was 10.1.36.3, you would need
C:\WINDOWS\LMHOSTS to look like:
Note that the file name is LMHOSTS, not LMHOSTS.TXT or
LMHOSTS.SAM (that's a sample file that explains how LMHOSTS works).
Watch that if you are using NOTEPAD or WORDPAD to create this.
Also see http://aplawrence.com/cgi-bin/ta.pl?110498
Printing to Windows Printers
If a Windows printer is shared ( see Windows Network Configuration, you can
print to it from Unix programs. Note that the user of that machine
does not necessarily need to be logged in to Unix or even to
Visionfs; the printer just needs to be shared. To do this, see
Visionfs Printing and the
related Visionfs Laserjet
Script
Command line print is easy:
`
Unless the shared printer is restricted to certain users, the "whatever" shouldn't matter.
Disable Browseable
Automatic printers are an annoying feature of Windows when there are printers you don't want users to choose. Usually I just tell the Windows side not to automatically add printers it sees on the network.
On XP, click Start, click Control Panel, Appearance and Themes, and then Folder Options. Click the View tab. Then In Advanced Settings, unclick the Automatically Search for Network Folders and Printers box.
To shut this off in Visionfs, use the Profile Editor, select the Master Printer share and uncheck both Active and Browseable. You can then set individual
printers that you do want seen to be both Active and Browseable.
You can also have Visionfs share a printer using a different name from the
Unix queue. Just select New Shared Printer, make the Share Name whatever you want itto be and point it at a Unix printer.
How can I add a formfeed or other control to jobs sent to a Visionfs printer?
Visionfs can create local printers that pass data to shared
windows printers, but it's not easy to modify the interface they
use.
You can do this with a virtual printer as described
at /SCOFAQ/scotec7.html
Create a printer that adds the \014 or whatever else you need,
and have
it pass its output to the Visionfs created printer.
You can use the "dumb" interface to do it, wrapping part of it
like this:
Visionfs Broadcasts
Visionfs broadcasts its presence and will appear in every workgroup
on the network. That's all or nothing: everywhere or nowhere. You can turn
off Windows Naming ( Profile Editor -> Server Properties -> Advanced -> Disable Naming). Users will then have to access it with \\servername or through mapped drives.
Why can't my other sub-net browse the Visionfs or Samba shares?
Because that's the way Microsoft wants it to work.
First, if all you want to do is ACCESS the shares, you can, even
though they don't pop up in Network neighborhood. You'll need a
\WINDOWS\LMHOSTS file, and all it needs in it is something like
this:
For NT, it's
"\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\LMHOSTS" (assuming your system is in
\WINNT)
The "#PRE" is not a comment, it needs to be there. With this in
place (and you probably need to reboot), you can do Start->Run,
type \\mysmbserver and, all other things being equal, it will pop
up.
You could add "net use x: \\unixserver\sharename" to the auotoexec.bat.
I have a more complete example of configuring a Windows machine on another subnet here.
But if you want to browse across sub-nets, you need more.
Microsoft wants you to put in an NT server on the subnet's LAN; you
can do it with a Unix/Linux machine running Samba and get the same
benefit.
See Cross-Subnet Browsing in the Samba HowTo Guide.
Can you run Visionfs across a VPN or the Internet?
Sure, if your routers will pass the port 139 packets. I did this once over a VPN to a branch office back in the days of very poor and very asymmetric internet connections. It was just this side of unbearable, but most VPN access was just as bad so they got used to it.
Somebody left this set for plain text passwords!
Yeah, because it was probably configured back when early Samba-like systems couldn't grok Windows encrypted passwords (early Windows didn't have that either).
Because of that early fault, I'd find systems set up for plain text plasswords many years after any need to do that had passed. Undoing it all of course required reversing settings at many machines.
Remember this?
Fun times..
How do I convert Visionfs to encrypted passwords?
Old versions of Visionfs could not handle encrypted passwords.
Current versions can, and you should use this feature.
If you have clients using plain text passwords you do not
have to change those- the server will accept both plain text and
encrypted passwords.
First run the visionfs setup program:
Switch to Visionfs (encrypted) passwords (or pass the whole
problem off to an NT server).
That will offer to run the password wizard. If it doesn't, or if
you want to run it again, do:
Here you can choose some automatic passwords. For example, you
can start by making the passwords the same as the login name- so
"sam" gets "sam" as a password.
The wizard lets you edit a file of names and passwords before it
finishes. You also can change passwords at any time; to change
Sam's password to "8y5fg" you can:
Windows 2000 and XP have a feature called "digital signing":
(So does 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555652
Microsoft moves stuff around a lot - if the link doesn't
work, just search "Digital Signing" on their site)
which is apparently turned on if the server is functioning as a domain controller. Samba and other non-Microsoft SMB products don't support this yet
though Samba does have it in the 3.0.0 beta: http://us1.samba.org/samba/whatsnew/samba-3.0.0beta3.html.
Visionfs is only licensed for the number of users licensed for SCO
Well, not precisely. You could specify "soft" or "hard" licensing:
You might wonder why people didn't use Samba instead. The reality was that early on, Visionfs actually was the superior choice.
This history of Visionfs talks about the features and design decisions for Visionfs.
Visionfs was not just a SCO product. SCO bought Visionware in 1994; they were already making products for major Unix platforms. Visionfs could run on Sun Solaris, SunOS 4.1.x, HP-UX, IBM AIX 3.2.5 and upwards, Digital UNIX 3.x, SCO UnixWare 2.x as well as SCO Openserver. I think Sun owns it now. At one time you could get it from Tarantella.com, but I think that may be gone also.
To see connections, try this:
Opening documents can take a LONG time
Indeed. Some apps try to open a LOT of files and of course each attempt consumes round-trip network time. This newsgroup post described a situation where opening a shared file with Notepad took one second, but opening the same file with Word took 60 seconds!/
Windows networks can be slow anyway. Anything misconfigured just made it worse. You could to force Visionfs to be the Master Browser with:
If it didn't win the election, it would at least tell you who did win and maybe you could convince THAT machine not to be the Master.
As Samba improved, many Visionfs users switched and usually found it to be faster (though network confusion will mess up Samba equally well, of course). Some SCO users insisted that the opposite was true, so who knows?
Many others switched to Facetwin, which did everything Samba and Visionfs could do and more.
The lock daemon dies
Ayup. We used to run something like this from crontab:
I did something similar to check "/usr/vision/bin/visionfs", though I don't recall now hat "bad" output was.
Can Visionfs mount Windows shares on Unix?
Yes. See 'clientadmin' and 'client' commands.
This is a multi-step procedure that requires one of the newer
versions of Visionfs (Samba has similar capabilities).
First: you have to export a NFS file system. That's as simple as
doing this:
Next, run /usr/vision/bin/visionfs clientadmin --setup
If you want individual users to determine their own access to
Windows shares, you are done: just have each user run
/usr/vision/bin/visionfs client --wizard
However, if you want to setup a global spot that anyone can
access, follow these steps:
As root, run
Use whatever permissions make sense for your system, of course:
755 gives everyone read access.
Next run /usr/vision/bin/visionfs client --wizard". Use the D
(domain password) choice- even if you do NOT have NT domains.
Assign a password (most Windows shares won't have a password, but
assign it anyway), say "Y" to install the settings, and then choose
"Q" to quit.
Now create symbolic links pointing at the machines you want to
give access to. For example:
This gives access the the "compaq" machine (assumong you ran the
clientadmin with the default to use /smb as your share directory).
Any user simply cd's to /Compaq to gain access to the shares,
and
will archive whatever resources are shared from that
machine.
If you are running a domain, it's usually easiest to point
Visionfs at the NT server for authentication - visionfs setup
A client can share a floppy drive so that an app can write to that, too.
Can Visionfs use a WINS server?
Sure. The Visionfs docs (which are easily found on the web in pdf format and
are also on the server itself) more than adequately cover configuring it
to be either a Wins server or a client of another server. You just run
"profedit" logged in as the Administrator on a Windows machine, click
Server Properties, and click the Wins tab, the "Register with these Wins
servers" (or something close to that).
If you don't know who the Visionfs administrator is, login to the Unix
box as root and run "/usr/vision/bin/visionfs status" or, if you need to
change the admin, use "/usr/vision/bin/visionfs setup"
You can map a Windows name to a Unix name if you do change the admin.
Let's say you want to use your Win2000 machine where you login as Fred
with the password "foobar8". You can tell visionfs setup (on Unix now)
that "fred" will be the admin and that the Unix name of fred is root.
You would then need to change root's password IN VISIONFS (you aren't
changing the unix login) by doing:
Notice that you use "fred"'s password here.
Then over on Windows, Network Neighborhood, find the Unix box, drill
down to Visiontools, and run "profedit" to set Wins.
Samba is much easier- you can do everything by editing text files on the
Unix side.
Can Visionfs convert line endings?
Yes. In the Profile Editor, select Vision Tools, then the Files tab, and click the Line Ending box. Here's the cut from Help describing it:
The options on the Line Endings dialog let you specify whether VisionFS converts line endings in files. Windows and UNIX use different styles of line endings in files. If a Windows user views a file saved from UNIX, or a UNIX user views a file saved from Windows, the user may not see line breaks in the correct places, or may see spurious characters at the end of lines. Converting UNIX-style line endings to Windows-style (and back again) solves this problem. VisionFS converts all files whose filenames match an entry in the list. VisionFS converts line endings from UNIX-style to Windows-style when a user reads the file, and from Windows-style to UNIX-style when a user writes the file. You can use the wildcard "*" to match multiple files. The wildcard can appear anywhere within the list entry. For example, if the list contains the entries *.txt and *.html, then files named report.txt and index.html would have their line endings converted.
You probably DON'T want "*.txt" converted.
Can Visionfs do roaming profiles?
Ayup. From the docs:
Network logon services let you configure what happens when Windows users log onto the network. When you enable network logon services, users Windows profiles (personal Windows settings, such as desktop icons and program groups) are stored centrally, on the VisionFS server. A VisionFS server can use one of its server names to provide network logon services to all the Windows PCs in a particular workgroup.
Once you've configured the VisionFS server and users PCs correctly, then whenever a user logs onto the network from a Windows PC, Windows retrieves their profile and user environment information from the VisionFS server. Retrieving profiles from a central location like this is called roaming profiles. Roaming profiles let users log onto different Windows PCs, yet always see the same, consistent Windows environment: the same icons on their desktops, the same applications started, and the same drive letters mapped.
Notice the .vfsclient file in users home directories - it's a text file that looks like this:
How can I send WinPopup messages to Windows machines?
John Hemo provided this:
VisionFS: use 'visionfs message' (this will show you the command
arguments and syntax)
Samba: use 'smbclient -M {NetBIOS name}' to send messages.
At one time, I had written a shell script to assist me with the
VisionFS command, it acted a bit like an email client, prompted me
for NetBIOS or user to send to, and then let me type/edit a message
before sending.
See Perl WinPopUp for a perl script which allows you to announce whatever you choose to
every PC client currently connected to a Samba Server.
Of course, if the recipient isn't running WinPopup, this info
won't help.
Visionfs licensing expires message
The other day a customer called saying that his Windows machines
couldn't print to SCO printers. He runs Visionfs, which needs
restarting every now and then, so I asked him to run "visionfs
restart". He replied immediately "I already did. It won't start".
Hmmm.. probably netbios running or something silly like that.
I sshed in to check.
Huh? That was a new one for me. I looked around, saw nothing out
of the ordinary. For the heck of it, I ran "visionfs setup" and ran
through it as though I were changing something but actually leaving
it as it was. Happily, that fixed the problem. Visionfs now ran, and
could be stopped and restarted without complaint. I've never seen
that before, but I did later find a TA that suggested this procedure
for similar symptoms.
Termlite
If you need a simple and pretty fair terminal emulator, consider
the Termlite product. If you open the readme file in the Termlite
folder on the CD (either locally on the PC or through the Visionfs
share), you'll find the license key to use (on 5.0.5 it is the same
as the Visionfs license). You can run the setup.exe program over
the net or locally. Recent versions don't install correctly on
Windows; you need to copy "termlite.no" from the share to the
Program Files/Vision/Termlite directory.
Termlite can take options: -host, -port, and -proto (telnet | tcp/ip | vtp | netbios), which means you can have different shortcuts for different purposes.
Windows 7 and Vista
These are problems. You may be able to fix it by running in the "XP Compatible" mode or by running gpedit.msc and changing Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options. But even if you can, that's a stopgap: this is a dying horse. Get off it.
See also Printing to Windows
Printers
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/16.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/39.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/91.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec4lmhosts.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/213.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/244.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/265.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/276.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/340.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/438.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/635.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/655.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/669.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/680.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/681.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/1300.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/1307.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/1765.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/2460.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/2462.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/2131.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/109.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/1252.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/1675.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/657.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/82.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/Bofcusm/852.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec4visionversion.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec2winpopup.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec2winvisshare.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec2visionpass.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec2cvisprint.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
EXTRACT:/SCO_OSR5/visionfs-license.html:/Unixart/visionfs.html
Comments: Click Here.
Want to showcase your product to our audience? Check our advertising options.
Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.
I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you
to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.
-
Samepage - Redefining how people create and share information
-
Kerio Mail Server, Firewall and more