Secure Global Desktop 4.31 Administration Guide > Printing > Printing from a Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 application server

Printing from a Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 application server

When users start or resume a Windows application that uses the Microsoft RDP Windows Protocol, information about the client's printers is sent to Secure Global Desktop. Secure Global Desktop 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 Windows clients, Secure Global Desktop Administrators can use the settings on the Printing properties panel in Array Manager to control whether users see all their client printers, just their default client printer, or no client printers. The settings on this panel can be overridden by the settings on the Printing panel for organization, organizational unit or person objects in Object Manager.

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

In the application server's Printers folder, the names of the client printers display as follows:

• in a Windows 2000 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 printer on the application server:

• Printer mapping must be enabled on the application server.
• The 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 Windows clients, the printer driver name is determined automatically from the client device using the standard Windows printing API. For all other client types, the printer driver must be configured in a printing configuration file, see configuring printing for UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X clients for details.

When printing from a 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 Secure Global Desktop PDF printing. Another solution, for Windows clients only, is to use printer driver mapping.

Printer driver mapping

For Windows clients, 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, Secure Global Desktop will use 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" would be 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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