[THIN] Re: How I got Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to work
- From: "Jim Kenzig kenzig.com" <jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:38:06 -0800 (PST)
I added it to the MakingPDFWork on http://www.thinwiki.com
Jim
"Pardee, Michael P." <MPardee@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
This should be on a FAQ (or a wiki). Nice write up.
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From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 3:09 PM
To: thin.net
Subject: [THIN] How I got Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to work
This is going to get long winded, so if you really don't care, you don't need
to read further. But, since it took so much, and data was so difficult to
find, I thought it might help to put this out for people.
First the stats
New CitrixXP with Feature Release 3. Windows 2K operating system, fully
patched. IBM 8832-21X blade server, 2GB RAM.
Now the problem:
We're running Magic, which is a front end for an Oracle database. The program
has different environments that are set by an INI file which is on the command
line of the launch. e.g. "n:\magic\magic.exe ini=n:\magic\enviro1.ini" (we're
publishing multiple environments- enviro2.ini, enviro3.ini, etc.)
One of the functions of Magic is that it can generate report files and then be
clicked on to view. In the past this was handled by the fat Magic client on
the PC and by a local PC install of Acrobat Writer, version 3. This would not
do for Citrix. The reader was then whatever local Acrobat reader was on the
PC. The pdf report generation was being set by a parameter in the INI file
that mapped 'printer2' to the old 'Acrobat PDFWriter' printer driver that
acrobat writer 3 used. That is the ONLY way for me to call a pdf write without
someone changing Magic Code (when I tested other software, I'd set the
printer2= value to "PDF995" or "Win2PDF" or whatever other 3rd party PDF maker
I was trying). I had tried Acrobat 5.0 writer but was getting errors. I tried
PDF995 and ALL the other 3rd party PDF writing programs but they did not work
perfectly. For instance, they would not correctly generate the report name as
the file name. My best guess is that whatever syntax was bei
ng used
to pass the file name to Acrobat 3 was still understood by Acrobat 5, but not
by the newer PDF writing programs. When I tried to generate the PDF with
Acrobat 5, I'd get "There was an error found printing to LPT1" with a
"Retry/Cancel" button set. Adobe.com had no useful information and the
solution that many thin.net people used (get a different pdf writer) wasn't
going to be acceptable to the people driving my project. So, here's the short
version of how I got it to work:
Installed Acrobat 5.0 in Install mode, like a good boy. Did a custom install
and mapped it to our app drive (N:\). Also, did NOT install ANY components
with the exception of the Acrobat PDFWriter printer driver (NO DISTILLER).
My INI file already had "Acrobat PDFWriter" as printer 2 so no change was
needed there. When I went to run a report I would see the following. 1st time
per citrix server per user I'd be prompted for a file name (I just hit ESC and
it doesn't come back- I'm working on finding a way to not have this happen at
all). And then I would get the LPT1 error as noted above.
I went into the hardware manager on the system and showed hidden devices (Click
View at the top of the MMC), . The IBM server showed 2 devices that were not
started. They were 'parallel' and 'paraport' or similar. I set them both to
"Boot" and rebooted. Then I went into the standard Hardware manager from
"System" under "Controll Panel" and manually added a piece of hardware. I
added a LPT port, and did not have it detect (because it was a blade server, it
did not have parallel ports I believe- I've never actually been in front of the
blade center, as I've done this all remotely). The hardware manager insisted I
custom config it, and i set the memory range on it, and rebooted. (Note, when
I went to do this on the 2nd server in the blade, I did not see these
'unstarted' hardware devices. I only had to go to Add Hardware from Control
Panel and manually add an LPT port to this machine, so what I activated may
have been for the whole blade).
Almost done. The last step that seems to make a difference for this working or
not was the presence of a TEMP folder on the system drive. I had tried giving
full access to the users to the M:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\SPOOL folder, as well as to
the M:\WINNT\TEMP but neither seemed to help. But when I added M:\TEMP and
gave the citrix users full access, I started getting PDF files.
My output is mapped to another drive (Samba share) and so far, I have been able
to get my first server running, AND unlike cold fusion, I was able to replicate
the behavior on a second server.
Hope I didn't bore people, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact
me. I don't know if this will work for everyone else (or anyone else for that
matter) but I thought I'd at least shoot this out to the list with the hopes it
might help. If just one more person can print PDF's through citrix with
acrobat, then I can rest knowing I've helped make the world a better place. :)
Stewart Werley
Consultant - BTS Equity
Guardian Life
3900 Burgess Place
Bethlehem, PA 18017
610-807-6842
Stewart_Werley@xxxxxxxx
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