Hi,

Here at the computermuseum and the planetarium at the 'Fachhochschule'
(University of Applied Sciences) in Kiel, Germany, we have a handful of
connected computers running windows 2000. Currently I'm using POV-Ray 3.1
g
installed locally on only one of these computers, but I want to have 3.5 
on
*all* of them, and hopefully we'll have more POVers here. To avoid having
 to
install POV-Ray on each of these computers, I would prefer to (let my adm
in)
install it only on the server and use it on all other computers via netwo
rk,
but of course running locally.

Is it possible (and sensible) to provide POV-Ray for these computers in t
his
way without any admin-activity (except for installation on the server)?

Will POV-Ray need to write to any directories on the server (when executi
ng
locally)?

Will each user have its own editor settings / list of open files / file q
ueue /
rerender and continue information / MRU list / POVRAY.INI / QUICKRES.INI 
etc.?
If so: are the individual settings stored locally or are they available o
n all
computers?

What is different (during installation / for the users), compared to a lo
cal
one-user-installation?

What else do I need to know?

I would be glad if someone could help me with this.

   Sputnik



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                          7-5,1,7>}sphere{
                 3-<3,9>5pigment{blue 5}
    }light_source              {-y,1}



-------------------------------------

e-mail: fr### [at] computermuseumfh-kielde
-------------------------------------

Post a reply to this message

> Hi,
> 
> Here at the computermuseum and the planetarium at the 'Fachhochschule'
> (University of Applied Sciences) in Kiel, Germany, we have a handful of
> connected computers running windows 2000. Currently I'm using POV-Ray 3.1g
> installed locally on only one of these computers, but I want to have 3.5 on
> *all* of them, and hopefully we'll have more POVers here. To avoid having to
> install POV-Ray on each of these computers, I would prefer to (let my admin)
> install it only on the server and use it on all other computers via network,
> but of course running locally.
> 
> Is it possible (and sensible) to provide POV-Ray for these computers in this
> way without any admin-activity (except for installation on the server)?
> 
> Will POV-Ray need to write to any directories on the server (when executing
> locally)?
> 


Povray can be installed on a network drive.
And it can write to a network drive (even if it is really ineffective).

In fact, an application usually does not care if the drive is local or 
remote... but there is another issue: simultaneous usage of the same 
files by different users...


> Will each user have its own editor settings / list of open files / file queue /
> rerender and continue information / MRU list / POVRAY.INI / QUICKRES.INI etc.?
> If so: are the individual settings stored locally or are they available on all
> computers?


There is three caveat: the Registry, ini/povengine.ini and renderer/rerun!
*.INI are usually in the shared installed "renderer" directory... you'd 
better turn that subtree read-only once installed on the server, but I 
do not know how to resolve conflict for rerun!
I'm afraid of conflict regarding ini/povengine.ini due to multiple 
simultaneous access...


> 
> What is different (during installation / for the users), compared to a local
> one-user-installation?


Every users will have to write to its registry part (local!), but the 
files would need to be installed only once on the server...


> 
> What else do I need to know?
> 
> I would be glad if someone could help me with this.

Would it not be simpler to put the pov-installer on the server and let's every user
install povray locally

(even if it waste the local disk space) ?

Post a reply to this message

Hi,

now I'm back again.

Thank you for your help.
Simultaneous read-only access seems to be no problem: POV-Ray 3.1 works
fine with (huge!) .inc-files used at the same time by 2 instances of POV.


> Would it not be simpler to put the pov-installer on the server
> and let's every user install povray locally
> (even if it waste the local disk space) ?

Disk space is no problem, but installation on every single computer is
no fun:
 - only our admin is allowed to install programs
 - the current state of all computers is captured in system images, so ..
.
 - ... if I install a program, it will be erased when the system is resto
red
 - updates must be transferred to all computers, so I will have to find
   out on which computers any of the users has installed POV-Ray; then th
e
   update requires much time

What I would like to have is:
 1. only one installation of POV-Ray on the server by admin
 2. every user can use POV-Ray on every computer without any installation

    and without admin

Is this possible?

   Sputnik

 

-------------------------------------

e-mail: fr### [at] computermuseumfh-kielde
-------------------------------------

Post a reply to this message

"Le Forgeron" <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote in message
news:3E0### [at] freefr...

<snip>

Hmm, one can have multiple instances of Pov running on a local machine - would a
network-installed Pov be any different?

Post a reply to this message

> Hmm, one can have multiple instances of Pov running on a local machine - would a
> network-installed Pov be any different?

I would be happy if there were no difference, but I fear that:
 - all users need write-access to the server's installation directory,
   overwriting for example rerun lists of other users because POV-Ray
   doesn't separate the users
 - editor preferences, the list of open files, paths etc. are only
   stored locally and not automatically available on every computer

Wouldn't it be fine to be able to go to any computer (even one which you
never used before), log in, start POV-Ray and automatically get your
personal settings over the network? In my opinion this would be especially
helpful in universities and schools, where many users share many networked
computers.

   Sputnik

Post a reply to this message

In article <3E1EFF06.A5880912@computermuseum.fh-kiel.de> , Frank 'Sputnik'


> Wouldn't it be fine to be able to go to any computer (even one which you
> never used before), log in, start POV-Ray and automatically get your
> personal settings over the network? In my opinion this would be especially
> helpful in universities and schools, where many users share many networked
> computers.

Well, that is clearly the responsibility of the operating system.  If WinDOS
does still not support this (are you sure it doesn't???), then use an
operating system that does.

    Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in
news:3e1f1ab9@news.povray.org: 

>
> Well, that is clearly the responsibility of the operating system.  If
> WinDOS does still not support this (are you sure it doesn't???), then
> use an operating system that does.
> 
>     Thorsten
> 

Not at all.  If is the choice of the application developer to support  
multiple users.  There are many applications that do what he requires.  
Windows POV-Ray is not one of them.

Post a reply to this message

In article <Xns### [at] 204213191226> , Tom Galvin 
<tom### [at] imporg>  wrote:

> Not at all.  If is the choice of the application developer to support
> multiple users.  There are many applications that do what he requires.
> Windows POV-Ray is not one of them.

??? I don't get what you are missing.  POV-Ray in no way depends on any path
or anything like that.  So where is the problem?  It definitely works this
way on the other two supported platforms, Mac OS and Linux without any
additional platform specific changes.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

> Hi,
> 
> now I'm back again.
> 
> Thank you for your help.
> Simultaneous read-only access seems to be no problem: POV-Ray 3.1 works
> fine with (huge!) .inc-files used at the same time by 2 instances of
> POV.

> What I would like to have is:
>  1. only one installation of POV-Ray on the server by admin 2. every
>  user can use POV-Ray on every computer without any installation
>     and without admin
> 
> Is this possible?

Almost.  After the admin installs POV-Ray on the server, you'll need to
update the registry on every computer that will be running POV to include
the key 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\POV-Ray\v3.5\Windows]
"Home"="C:\\path\\to\\pov-ray\\install\\directory"
I think that's the only essential registry setting for POV 3.5

-- 
Mark

Post a reply to this message

Hi,

many thanks for the help.

Now I think we'll be able to get a user-friendly
multi-computer multi-user installation of POV-Ray
here.

   Sputnik

-- 

-------------------------------------

e-mail: fr### [at] computermuseumfh-kielde
-------------------------------------

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