DanM

My move to Waterloo from Bermuda made this release late, but iMKS b404 is ready to roll.

Bug fixes:
VMware Server 2.0 console would not start when launched from iMKSfox.
(Thanks go out to Eric Klopfer for the report)

Package Updates:
FreeNX 0.7.3 - Improved session stability
VMware Server remote console (vmware-vmrc) updated to 2.0-final

Feature enhancements:
Add VNC mirroring capabilities to NX and console sessions; useful for screen sharing or accessing Virtual Infrastructure with an iPhone running Jaadu VNC.

If you're using iMKS feel free to post your observations/comments in this blog. Over 3TB of bandwidth has been consumed serving out this appliance and it would be very helpful to get input on how people are using iMKS. Mac OS X users looking for a VMware Server 2.0 or VI3 Remote Console appear to be the majority of users, but iMKS is a universal WAN-optimized display proxy so that's just one of many scenarios. Share your experiences!

The following images show an iPhone running Jaadu VNC, logged into a VNC-mirrored iMKS session. First image is managing ESX Server and the second is a VMware Server Console connected to a P2V'd Ferrari 3400 I won at VMworld a few years ago. Jaadu VNC mouse/keyboard/screen performance in remote consoles is very good and the Web Interface is quite useable over WiFi, haven't tried it over EDGE yet.

So close, yet so far away!

With a weekend of ThinApp and WINE tweaking/hacking atop iMKS Project's WINE install, this is as far as I could get running the VI Client on my PbG4. Interestingly, I tried the VI Client in a WINE-only environment as well, and got just as far with that as my Thinstall bundle. I did an end-run around schannel.dll issues by disabling SSL on my host. Once past that, I get an error parsing the server's config.xml file. I think this is due to the VI Client failing on a .dll somewhere in the winsock/network stack. There's also more issues pointing to XML-parsing problems in WINE's .Net install. If this can be made to work with ThinApp on-top Wine, we will have a VI3 Client that essentially runs on PowerPC Macs, Solaris and Linux (Oh yeah, WinTel too. Heh...)

There was one nice take-away from this failed VI-Client-on-everything mission... I got Office 2003 running in WINE and I've figured out a couple of wierd FreeNX/X11/Wine issues that were annoying the heck out of me. It's unbeleivably cool how close iMKS has gotten to being a free and open alternative for running Windows software over the 'Net, acting as both application and terminal server.