[THIN] Re: How I got Adobe Acrobat 5.0 to work
- From: "Pardee, Michael P." <MPardee@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:00:26 -0500
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 being 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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