Secure Global Desktop 4.40 Administration Guide > Printing > Printing From a Microsoft Windows 2000 or 2003 Application Server

Printing From a Microsoft Windows 2000 or 2003 Application Server

When a user starts or resumes a Windows application that uses the Microsoft RDP Windows Protocol, information about the client's printers is sent to SGD. SGD supplies this information to the application server and the application server then creates (or maps) the printers in the Windows Terminal Services session.

When accessing an application on a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Microsoft Windows Server 2003, a user sees the printers that are attached to the client and also the printers that are attached directly to the application server.

For users with Microsoft Windows client devices, Secure Global Desktop Administrators can configure whether users see all their client printers, just their default client printer, or no client printers. You can configure this as follows:

• Globally - In the SGD Administration Console, on the Global Settings » Printing tab. this affects all users with Microsoft Windows client devices.
• Individually - In the SGD Administration Console, on the Printing tab for a user profile. This can be for an organization, an organizational unit or user profile object. If you configure an organization or organizational unit object, this affects all the users in that organization or organizational unit.

For users with other client devices, the client printer users can see depends on the printers that have been configured.

When running a Windows application session, the names of the client printers display in the application server's Printers folder as follows:

• In a Windows 2000 application session, "printer_name/Sun SGD/Session number", for example HP LaserJet 8000 Series PS/Sun SGD/Session 1
• In a Windows 2003 session, "printer_name (from Sun SGD) in session number", for example, HP LaserJet 8000 Series PS (from Sun SGD) in session 1

To be able to create a client printer in the Microsoft Windows application session, the following must be true:

• Printer mapping must be enabled on the application server, see Configuring Microsoft Windows Terminal Services for use with SGD for details.
• The SGD Client must determine the name of the printer driver for the client printer and send it to application server.
• The printer driver for the client printer must be installed on the application server.

For Microsoft Windows client devices, the printer driver name is determined automatically from the client device using the standard Windows printing API. For all other client device types, the printer driver must be configured in a printing configuration file, see Configuring Printing for UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X Platform Client Devices for details.

When printing from a Microsoft Windows application, the large number and variety of client printers available can cause problems. The majority of the problems are caused by not having the correct printer drivers installed on the application server. One solution is to use SGD PDF printing. Another solution, for Windows client devices only, is to use printer driver mapping. Printer driver mapping is discussed in the following section.

Printer Driver Mapping

For Windows client devices, you can use printer driver mapping to map one printer driver name to another. You do this by editing the [Previous Names] section of the /opt/tarantella/etc/data/default.printerinfo.txt file.

For example, if the file contains the following entry:

[Previous Names]
"HP LaserJet 5" = "my HP driver", "my other HP driver"

This means that if you have any client printers that use either the "my HP driver" or "my other HP driver" printer driver, SGD uses the "HP LaserJet 5" printer driver when creating the printer.

You can also use wild-card characters (* and ?) on the right hand side of the = sign. Use * to mean any string of characters including an empty string and ? to mean any single character. This is useful, for example, to create generic printer mappings where you have a wide variety of client devices.

For example, if the file contains the following entry:

[Previous Names]
"HP LaserJet 5" = "hp*laserjet 5*"

All printer driver names like "HP LaserJet 5", "HP LaserJet 5M", and "HP Color LaserJet 5" are mapped to the printer driver "HP LaserJet 5".

The default.printerinfo.txt file contains more detailed instructions on how to create the mappings.

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