Citrix WinView Application Notes DCA's Irma Workstation for Windows This application note is for informational use only and Citrix makes no representations or warranties with respect to the contents or use of this document or of any third-party products discussed within. March 11, 1994 Citrix Systems 210 University Drive Suite 700 Coral Springs, FL 33071 (305)755-0559 FAX: (305)341-6880 Overview -------- This application note discusses the use of the DCA Irma Workstation for Windows product (referred to as IWW) with the Citrix WinView Application Server (referred to as WinView) product. IWW is a Windows-based 3270-type terminal emulator that allows access to an IBM mainframe from a Windows workstation. Using IWW on a WinView application server rather than on a DOS station provides all the benefits of application servers to IWW users: high-speed remote access, enhanced WAN access, and access for underpowered LAN stations. The intended audience for this document is a engineer who has had hands on experience with WinView, NetWare, and DCA's Irma products. The scenarios described in this document have been thoroughly tested by Citrix and Citrix believes that you should be able to get IWW to work with WinView without any problems if you follow carefully the information and steps in this document. Other variations to the scenarios described in this document may in fact work fine, however they have not specifically been tested by Citrix. In order to maximize your chance for success, you should use the specified revision levels of all software products described in this document and stay within the bounds of the features and functions described in this document. Please note that this application note document is a living document and will be modified as new information and new versions of the software described herein become available. Make sure you have the latest version of this document before you begin. The latest version is always available in the Citrix Forum on CompuServe. Requirements ------------ To use IWW on a WinView application server you will need the following: Software Requirements - Citrix WinView 2.2 or 2.21 - DCA Irma Workstation for Windows 2.2 - Novell NetWare 3.11, 3.12 or 4.01 - Novell NetWare for SAA 1.3b, or DCA IrmaLan 3.0.6 Hardware Requirements - NetWare file server - Mainframe Gateway server > DOS system for IrmaLan connection, or > NetWare for SAA server (may be same as file server) - WinView server > 486DX-25 CPU or larger > 12 meg memory or more > NetWare supported network adapter Configuration Notes ------------------- The desired number of concurrent IWW users will help determine the hardware configurations of the WinView server and the mainframe gateway server. It is possible for the gateway server to service IWW users from multiple WinView servers and also from DOS network nodes. For a large number (more than 15) of total IWW users using the NetWare for SAA mainframe connection, you should consider installing NetWare for SAA on its own server rather than on the NetWare file server. The maximum number of concurrent IWW users supported on a single WinView server is determined by the hardware specifications of that WinView server. Memory is the most critical resource for the WinView server in determining the number of users. Use the following rule of thumb: 8 megabytes base memory plus 2 megabytes for each IWW user. Thus, a 16 megabyte system will support 4 concurrent IWW users. To go beyond 16 megabytes, you will need either a EISA system or a 32-bit MCA system. Also, you should increase the CPU size as the user count goes up. The Network Interface Card (NIC) can also make a difference. For large user count systems, you should use a high performance bus master NIC in your WinView server. The following table shows recommended hardware configurations for your WinView server according to user count: USERS MEMORY CPU/mhz BUS NIC 2 12meg 486-25 ISA low performance 4 16meg 486-25 ISA low performance 6 20meg 486-33 EISA med performance 8 24meg 486-33 EISA med performance 10 28meg 486-50 EISA high performance 12 32meg 486-50 EISA high performance It is important to note that the above user count recommendations are based on the assumption that each user will only be running IWW. If the users are running other applications along with IWW, the memory requirements per user will go up. You may also need to increase the CPU power accordingly. Limitations of IWW under WinView Not all features and functions of IWW are supported under WinView. Limitations under WinView are itemized below: 1) Of fourteen mainframe connection types that IWW offers, the only two that are currently recommended for use with WinView are: - connecting through a NetWare for SAA gateway - connecting through an IrmaLan gateway with IPX/SPX 2) IWW cannot run in Windows Enhanced Mode under WinView. As a result, the HLL Redirector feature of IWW is not supported. The HLL Redirector feature allows DOS HLLAPI programs to communicate with the mainframe through IWW. This feature is not supported. However, Windows-based HLLAPI programs can work with IWW under WinView. 3) Only the US English language option has been tested and is known to work. 4) Only the standard PC 101-key keyboard is supported. None of the optional keyboards are supported. Installation ------------ Citrix recommends that you install the IWW software on your Novell file server, rather than on your WinView server. The installation is done in two parts: the main server installation, and a client installation for each separate WinView user. The IWW server installation process also installs one IWW client during the process. However, DCA recommends that you "undo" the client that was installed and instead install that client separately. The following installation notes incorporate DCA's suggestions. IWW Server Installation 1) Enter a Windows standard mode session from any WinView station. Make sure you are logged into the NetWare server. 2) Select the RUN menu item from the FILE pulldown menu in the Program Manager and then enter A:\SETUP. DO NOT try to install from the RUN menu item within the Windows File Manager, as this will not work correctly. 3) Specify English US as the language when prompted. 4) You will asked to read the license agreement at this point. Note that DCA requires you to purchase an IWW license for each user of IWW. This means you need an IWW license for each WinView user who will be using IWW. 5) Specify installation on File Server for Shared Access when prompted. 6) For the connection type, add either Irmalan for NetWare or NetWare for SAA or both. If both are added, you will be asked to pick a primary connection type in the next step. Do not add any other connection types since no other options are supported under WinView. 7) Under the Applications selection screen, choose those applications that you want to use. All are supported under WinView except the Redirector application. 8) Next, specify the directory where you want the IWW software installed. This should be a public directory on the file server, such as Z:\APPS\IRMAWIN. Note that IWW will not install correctly on a MAP ROOT drive. 9) The next prompt for the private directory is misleading. According to DCA, you should specify a public directory during the IWW server install. It is recommended that you specify a sub directory of your main IWW install directory, such as Z:\APPS\IRMAWIN\CONFIG. 10) Now the IWW SETUP program will prompt you for each of the remaining installation disks. If you are using WinView 2.2, you will get an erroneous write-protect error when prompted for each disk. However, the installation will proceed normally if you select CANCEL after each write-protect error. This problem does not occur in WinView 2.21. 11) Next, IWW will ask you for a group name for the IRMA programs. What you enter here really doesn't matter, since we are going to delete this group anyway. 12) You will be prompted for permission to change your AUTOEXEC.BAT, WIN.INI, and SYSTEM.INI files. DO NOT make these changes at this time. 13) The IWW SETUP program is now complete, and it will ask you if you want to restart Windows as it exits. There is no need to restart Windows here since no .INI files were updated. 14) Using the Windows Program Manager, delete the IWW group that was created. This is done by clicking on the IWW group icon and selecting delete from the Windows Program Manager's FILE pulldown. 15) Before you can use IWW, you must install at least one IWW client as described below. IWW Client Installation ----------------------- Each WinView user who wishes to use IWW will have to perform the following procedure. 1) Login to WinView as the user for which you wish to install the IWW client software. Make sure you are logged into the NetWare server from WinView. Start a Windows standard mode session. 2) Select the RUN menu item from the FILE pulldown menu in the Program Manager and run the IWW SETUP program from the IWW server directory on the file server. If you used our example directory name during the IWW server installation, you would enter Z:\APPS\IRMAWIN\SETUP. DO NOT try to install from the RUN menu item within the Windows File Manager, as this will not work correctly. 3) You will be asked to read the license agreement at this point. Note that DCA requires you to purchase an IWW license for each user of IWW. This means you need an IWW license for each WinView user who will be using IWW. 4) Select the attach to NetWare Server option when prompted. 5) If you selected both supported connection types during the IWW server installation (IrmaLan and NetWare for SAA), you will be prompted to select your primary (default) connection type. 6) Next, you will be prompted for a private directory where all of your IWW customizations will be stored. Citrix recommends you specify your private directory on the NetWare file server, such as Z:\USERS\RANDYW. CAUTION: if you specify the name of a subdirectory that has not been previously created, IWW will erroneously delete your user directory on the server. To avoid this, you need to pause at this point and go create the subdirectory with the Windows File Manager before you proceed. 7) You will be prompted for the group name you want to use for the IWW group. DCA recommends that you use IRMA Workstation. 8) You will be prompted to change your AUTOEXEC.BAT, WIN.INI, and SYSTEM.INI files at this point. You should go ahead and let IWW SETUP make these changes. Since WinView has an AUTOEXEC.BAT per user which resides in your \USR\username directory and since IWW assumes a single global AUTOEXEC.BAT, you will have to hand edit these IWW changes in your local \USR\username\AUTOEXEC.BAT file. 9) The IWW client installation is now complete. The IWW Setup program will ask if you want to restart Windows before it exits. You should not restart Windows at this point. Instead, you should exit Windows and logout of WinView. Then you can log into WinView again and start Windows. You will now be ready to use the IWW software. Many NetWare network administrators like to avoid going through the Windows' Setup procedure for each user. In some cases, they copy .INI files from a master or template user or other such acts. Citrix recommends that you run the IWW Setup program for each WinView user since trying to avoid the Setup step is both tricky and error prone. Operation --------- After IWW is successfully installed on the server and installed for each WinView user, running IWW should be no different, operationally, than running IWW from a DOS node. However, there are some additional considerations described below. Having enough LUs Each IWW user can have multiple concurrent mainframe sessions as either terminal or printer sessions. It is important to keep in mind that each mainframe session requires an LU, including printer sessions. Your mainframe gateway server must support enough LUs to satisfy all of your users' needs. File Transfer When using the file transfer feature in IWW, you can have the file transfer take place to or from the NetWare file server, or from the WinView server. If you are using Citrix LANLINK to connect to the WinView server, you potentially have an additional option of transferring files to or from the local hard disk on your client PC. This can be accomplished by using the "Client Drive Mapping" feature of LANLINK. All file transfer operations are accomplished the same way, regardless of where your file resides. The drive letter will determine which hard disk your file will be transferred to or from. Thus, it is important to understand where each drive is MAPped to before you begin a file transfer function. If you are connected to WinView with a Citrix RLINK client, you have to use a two-step process to transfer files to or from you local hard disk. For example, if you are trying to upload a file to the mainframe from your local hard disk, you would first upload the file to the WinView server's hard disk using WinView's upload command. The second step is to upload it to the mainframe from the WinView server's hard disk using the IWW file transfer program. To download a file from the mainframe to your local hard disk, you would first use IWW to download it to the WinView server's hard disk. Then you would use the WinView download command to transfer the file down to your local hard disk. Printing Printing with IWW also has several options. Your mainframe program can print to a printer attached to the mainframe, to a printer attached to the NetWare print server, or to a printer attached to your WinView client PC. To print to a mainframe printer, you need to only specify the name of a printer located on the mainframe. To print on either the network printer or on your local printer, you must specify to the mainframe the name of a printer that has its LU assigned to the mainframe gateway server. To print on the NetWare print server, you must use the NetWare CAPTURE command to redirect one of your Windows' print devices (eg. LPT1.DOS) to a NetWare print queue. You can perform the Netware CAPTURE function from within Windows by going to the Windows Print Manager, selecting Options and then selecting Network Connections. After you have CAPTUREd your printer, you will need to start an IWW 3270 Printer session configured to your CAPTUREd print device (eg LPT1.DOS) and leave it running in an online state. Finally, tell your mainframe program to print to a printer with its LU assigned to the mainframe gateway server. To print to the local printer attached to your client PC, you must use the WinView local printing feature. Do not use the NetWare CAPTURE command for your Windows' print devices (eg. LPT1.DOS). Instead you will specify a printer device name in the "Printer Port" field of your LANLINK or RLINK setup screen before you log onto the WinView server. This will redirect any print jobs directed to LPT1 to your local LPT1 port. Next, you will need to start an IWW 3270 Printer session configured to your LPT1 and leave it running in an online state. Finally, tell your mainframe program to print to a printer with its LU assigned to the mainframe gateway server. If you wish to use a device other than LPT1, you can use the WinView "CHANGE MAP" command to configure the local printer. See the Citrix WinView Command Reference, page 2-29, for more details. Compatibility ------------- There are no known hardware incompatibilities when using IWW and WinView at this time. When selecting a hardware platform for WinView, make sure you choose from the list of supported hardware devices in the "Citrix Compatibility Guide". Diagnosing Problems ------------------- The most common problem encountered using IWW under WinView is not being able to get a mainframe connection. This usually has nothing to do with WinView but rather is a problem in connecting to the gateway server or a problem connecting the gateway server to the mainframe. The first step in diagnosing a connection problem is to run IWW on a DOS/Windows node and try to connect. This will remove WinView from the picture to help isolate the problem. If you cannot get a connection from the DOS/Windows node, you should contact DCA's tech support for help. If you do get a connection from the DOS/Windows node, make sure that IWW under WinView is configured the same as the DOS/Windows node. If you are still unsuccessful making a connection from WinView, contact Citrix's tech support.