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Inventu Viewer+ Setups 2023C1

March 13, 2023 by ViewerAuthor

Reorganized and Re-written Documentation, Continuous Fixes and Enhancements

Inventu Viewer+ Base Product and Components

(Version: 6.0.88 March  2, 2023)

https://software.inventu.com/2023C1?dl=IVSetup64.exe (64bit)

Inventu Viewer Documentation

  • Installed documentation starting with the main help has been reorganized with many new sections which better support installation, configuration and administration of the Web Terminal Emulation environment.
  • Added new help to support the Diagnostic Workbench and common support issues
  • Added help to the Inventu Viewer Microsoft Management Console Snap-In now accessible with the F1 key or help menu options

Inventu Viewer Emulation Service

  • Replaced the “Warning” column in reporting session details with the “WebSocket” column to better support understanding of network health. In customer situations where network components are impacting quality of service, web sockets are usually the best indicator of network quality.  This column will display the following values:
    • OK – The websocket is connected with no recent errors
    • ERR-[n] – [n] Web socket errors have occurred since the session started. This number may be higher than expected if a session has been active for many hours.  The session is still using web sockets so there has been healthy activity in-between the errors
    • BROKEN – There were enough errors close together that the connection has been switched to AJAX web service calls. If many sessions have BROKEN it means there is a general failure in a network component somewhere in your network.
    • API – the connection is for a server-side web service or other process (not FVTerm) and so no websocket is involved
  • Added Event Log entry for when a 5250 device name is rejected by the host (this improves diagnostics for session initialization errors that only users could detect and report)
  • Updated support for Windows Performance Counters including rename to Inventu Viewer Performance Counters from Flynet Performance Counters
  • Updated SChannel TLS API calls to active structures (previous versions used structures that have been deprecated)
  • Added Event Log entry for when a 5250 device name is rejected by the host (this improves diagnostics for session initialization errors that only users could detect and report)
  • Improved automatic creation of data transfer and host device printing folders adding creation of “XFersFrom”, “XfersTo” and “SessPrintFiles”
  • Metered license support was still using the HTTP port to communicate metering activity to the Inventu website—updated to HTTPS
  • Some ASCII Viewpoint fixes for box drawing and cursor location limits
  • Some internal synchronization calls had additional error checking implemented.

FVTerm Web Terminal Emulator

  • View and Profile Access Control has been expanded to include Oauth2 OpenID Connect and SAML 2.0. Previous versions only supported access control for Windows Security and Google ID User Authorization.  See the Profiles Mode Configuration for details.
  • Function Key Identification was enhanced to support the pattern of a dash in addition to an equals and space following a function key name (F3-Exit is now highlighted for click like F3=Exit).
  • Added ability to edit emulation style CSS files when accessing the FVTerm web application on the server (localhost). This is managed with a new Icon (color wheel magnifying glass) that previously enabled simply viewing a field’s active CSS style settings.  With the new enhancement, administrators can edit click on a field to edit it’s active style as found in the selected color option (such as the standard 3270 style).   Adding a new CSS file is still a manual operation where an existing CSS file is copied with a new name, then added with a text editor to the CSS list in web.config.
  • For 5250 and 3270 sessions, a new option set in the Profile “Numeric Only Locking” will support host applications that have fields restricted to “numeric only” but in fact need users to be able to enter alpha characters. When Numeric Only Locking is set false for a profile, users will no longer be stopped from entering alpha characters (when true a user needs to override for each field set as numeric only).
  • There is a setting “Clipboard Copy Mouse Activation” which has the default true—the timeout has been increased from ½ second to a full second to avoid undesired switch to the clipboard rectangle drawing. This is also now settable with “Clipboard Copy Mouse Activation Press Milliseconds” if more than a second is desired.
  • The wrong HTML character name was being used for the dash/minus resulting in display errors for certain fonts.
  • Websocket error handling tweaked to better capture exceptions
  • Websocket errors now reported to the Inventu Viewer Emulation service to enable tracking of websocket / network health

Profiles Mode Configuration

  • Changing the FVTerm Access Security Type in the Web Server tab will now set the User Connection Identity setting to match the optimal source based on the security type.
  • For SAML 2.0 added “SAML 2.0 Security Groups Claim Name” defaulting to “groups” which enables identifying the identifier of the claim that represents a user’s group or roles membership.
  • For OAuth2 OpenID Connect added “OpenID Connect Security Groups Claim Name” defaulting to “groups” which enables identifying the identifier of the claim that represents a user’s group or roles membership.
  • Added “Obtain Security Groups from Provider” to enable control over the group lists used in View and Profile access control. This includes an option to utilize the Microsoft Graph API to obtain active groups from AzureAD as well as an option to define the list with the new property “Security Group Names for Access Control”
  • Added “Security Group Names for Access Control” which is active when “Obtain Groups Names from Provider is set to “Manage Group Names Here”. This is a list that can be edited to define the group names used for access control to Views or Profiles.

Inventu Viewer Administration Console

  • Active Sessions now report web socket health in farthest column to the right (replaces “warnings” which were generally of limited value)

Inventu Viewer Microsoft Management Console Snap-In

  • Contextual help has been added so that the F1 or Help menu options can provide help on how to use the Inventu Viewer MMC snapin
  • Active Sessions now report web socket health in farthest column to the right (replaces “warnings” which were generally of limited value)
  • When updating a Cluster node the title of the dialog now reflects that action
  • Added Server Actions to View and Repair internal Cluster User and Session Linked-Lists (Chains) to address rare situations where the Chains can be in error condition
  • The Session Viewer (Terminal Emulator) can now have the host keys remapped the same way that the Recorder V2 supports (button at bottom of the screen accesses the keyboard remapping popup)
  • Added Support for Accessing server management port using HTTPS — This was implemented to enable Helpdesk and other users to access the Inventu Service management port from other servers besides the localhost (on the server).  At this time the Inventu Viewer Service HTTP port does not support HTTPS but Inventu can provide a simple configuration file for use with STunnel to provide the external HTTPS access.
    • When adding a Server to the View, can now check that the Port is HTTPS
    • When defining or updating a cluster, each server can now be accessed with a custom port and HTTPS
    • The help for configuring STunnel at the server to front-end the FlyServer.exe console port has been added to the software.inventu.com help at https://software.inventu.com/help/html/stunnel/index.html

Notification Tray Icon

  • On a live production server, active HTTP requests to the FVTerm Application Pool were causing initialization of the FlyServer service shared memory to fail during restarts (even when recycle of the FVTerm Application Pool is selected). The logic has been improved so that the FVTerm Application pool is stopped, the Service is restarted and then the Application Pool is Started back up.

Diagnostics Dashboard

  • If an expected diagnostic folder is missing this version will create it and only display an error message if the creation fails.
  • Exception handling added for startup Registry Reads that in some cases caused a startup failure.
  • Continuing improvements including recommended actions based on discovered events and active probes
  • Diagnostic Dashboard independent executable created that is downloadable by customers with older versions of both Flynet Viewer and Inventu Viewer-available on request to all Inventu customers with active maintenance or subscription.

ViewerLib API

  • Added new read/write Integer property for the HostConnection Object: webSocketErrors which is now used by the FVTerm web process to report any issues with a connected client web socket connection.

FVIISApi Executable

  • A little known utility primarily used by the Installer logic to identify and manage active IIS configurations was upgraded to support making it simpler for users to make FVTerm the default folder. This is documented in the new documentation under “making FVTerm the default application”.  Button is “Update FVTerm URL Links” so that when FVTerm is made default the various menu options are updated when referencing FVTerm resources.

 

Filed Under: Admin, Uncategorized, Web Terminal Emulation

Inventu Viewer+ Setups 2022I2

September 20, 2022 by ViewerAuthor

Support for OAuth2 OpenID Connect, Improved Support for Clustered Servers and Additional Fixes and Enhancements

Inventu Viewer+ Base Product and Components

(Version: 6.0.81 September 20, 2022)

https://software.inventu.com/2022I2?dl=IVSetup64.exe (64bit)

FVTerm Web Terminal Emulation

  • Oauth2 OpenID Connect has been added as an identity management option. Tested with Auth0, Okta, Salesforce and Microsoft Azure AD.
  • The FVHealth.aspx module, used by load balancers to check on the health of a server has been updated to incorporate the new “Server Report Over Percentage” Advanced setting in the Profiles Configuration page. When the Server Report Over Percentage is set to a different value than 0, there will be a calculation based on other server availability—if the server reporting has fewer available sessions by the percentage set, it will report “OVER” instead of “ACTIVE” as part of the status message.  An example message returned is “OVER – 123 Sessions Available; Other Server(s)=137, Over=11%”.   This will also return the Server Unavailable Response Code if it is something other than 200.
  • Some 3270 screens that extensively used extended attributes broke the password recognition javascript so that a password field would not be masked with asterisks. Was happening if a password entry field was defined and then had the color changed in the first character.
  • SAML 2.0 active user information data is now saved to disk and restored if the FVTerm v4.0 Application Pool is recycled (also with OpenID Connect).
  • The Web Socket Handler was improved so that the task monitoring terminal session changes is persistent and in a tight loop, communicating events to the websocket task via a queue–this was previously returning an event and then re-started following each host event or timeout.
  • Web Socket handler cleanup following a websocket error or session closing is faster and more efficient in resource utilization.
  • When a DBCS field contains a single blank, the ViewerLib API fix is interpreted in the Javascript using a new protocol command
  • Function key recognition improved
  • For 5250 and 3270 field formatted screens, clipboard paste of multi-row column data from a spreadsheet was not aligning with fields arranged as columns on a target screen. Rather than starting on the next row when the last field on a spreadsheet row was pasted, the paste would just continue on the next field, same row instead of starting on the next row.
  • Some 5250 screens with certain attributes were rendered incorrectly due to a change intended to reduce data transmission sizes.
  • Some host screen updates were locking the keyboard with a large buffer update followed by a small buffer with the keyboard unlock. Sync with the client was improved so that if an update is received and the keyboard is still locked, ½ second wait for next update to reduce buffers sent to the client.  Generally the wait is for a millisecond as the next buffer is right there.
  • Default IO threads increased over prior default to improve performance with large number of active sessions
  • The web API call that can be used for distributed load balancing (no load balancer needed), fvterm/Cluster/balanceinfo.aspx improved to better handle error conditions and service-down issues.

FlyServer Emulation Service

  • Clustered server status tickets were upgraded to include complete status of the server sending the ticket.
  • Clustered servers will now accept a new user or session start even when at full allocation for the concurrent user or session license. This will occur as long as other servers in the cluster have available sessions.  In prior versions, this would only occur if one or more of the other server(s) in the cluster were on hold or offline.  From this version on, a server will not reject a new connect unless all servers in a cluster are at full capacity.
  • Clustered servers will now keep track of session availability to support the ability for a server in the cluster to report the new “OVER” status for a load balancer. This is further explained in the Profiles Mode Configuration and FVTerm Web Terminal Emulator sections.
  • A character used for Telnet escape sequences was appearing in random SSH ASCII protocol buffers. This was being interpreted as a Telnet escape sequence (character is 0xFF) but then would not have a valid “next” character in the supposed sequence.  Between 2022F2 and 2022G1 this was logged and the active buffer abandoned.  In this release the 0xFF is converted to a blank and ignored (buffer is completed).
  • TN3270 Internal buffer sizes could have 0xFF characters causing problems in rare circumstances. Fixed in this build.
  • Unknown TN3270 WSF commands were being logged, but not including a comprehensive full buffer log (in the recordings folder as an “Event*.log” file). As part of a concerted effort to identify all unsupported protocol issues unknown WSF commands will now be fully logged.
  • TN3270 IND$File binary downloads were hanging when a 0xFF character appeared as the last character in a buffer.
  • TN3270 Modify Field commands with invalid offsets were being logged to the event log but without needed information to understand the possible issue—added comprehensive full buffer log.
  • Added a new registry setting – “SessionTracking” which defaults to “no” –Session tracking creates a log in the data folder for each ID, like “Session_1.log” and so on.
  • The text string “*TIMEOUT*” was causing logging in the data folder each time a session timed out. This was unintentional and causes the presence of trace files with nothing but timeout entries.  This has been changed to –TIMEOUT– to avoid this unnecessary tracing.
  • TN5250 DBCS (Double Byte Character Set) had some combinations of field types that were not being properly translated at the server
  • Tweaks for TN3270 IND$File file transfers to improve reliability on very large transfers and data escapes.
  • SSH ASCII terminal types can include the 0xFF character in datastreams that was causing problems since this is a Telnet command escape character. If SSH, the 0xFF character will not cause an error if not part of a Telnet escape and will be replaced with a blank (0x20).
  • Fixed trace issue that would create an event log entry for sharing problem with flyserv_n.log file
  • Internal synchronization tweaked to avoid rare locking issues.

Profiles Mode Configuration

  • Added new Security Option- Oauth2 OpenID Connect as well as the necessary configuration settings.
  • Added a new entry on the Web Server tab in the Advanced section for clustered servers: Server Report Over Percentage.  This setting can produce better allocation of sessions between servers when it is found that a load balancer is allocating too many sessions or users to a particular server.  Due to round-robin being simplistic, this can happen most often when the active license is user-based.
  • Online Help for Security was organized so that each Identity option has its own section now in the Table of Contents (OpenID Connect also added)

Diagnostics Dashboard

  • First introduced in June, continuous improvements have been made to the Diagnostics Dashboard
    This provides extensive analysis of the Event Log to identify issues and corrective actions. It includes:

    • Parsing and analysis of active Event Log entries along with a consolidated viewer of Informational, warning and error events.
    • Suggested Actions along with linked help for identified issues
    • Tests of the active Emulation Service and the IIS FVTerm Application
    • Easy export of all diagnostic logs and events to a zip file for appending to an Inventu Support Ticket
    • Easy Export of configuration elements for replication on another server or to provide to Inventu appended to a support ticket

Viewer Administration Console

  • Added new Settings for Service—
    • “Create MiniDumps on Exception” – Default is Yes / Checked, will create a Minidump on exception saved in the active data/logging folder. The “Catch Program Exceptions” must be checked for this option to work
    • “Track Session LifeCycles” – Default is No / Unchecked. When checked, will create key session start/stop events as Session_n.log in the active data/logging folder

ViewerLib API

  • Added a new property to the HostConnection object – mostOtherAvailableLicenses which can be used in conjunction with the availableLicenses property to calculate a server’s percentage of under or over allocation.
  • Screen-to-HTTP streaming function fixed to accommodate when a DBCS field contains single blanks, which are represented using a single “start DBCS data” character instead of a blank.

Installer

  • The installer will now set the shortcuts for the FVTerm web application to match the default web folder—this includes both requiring FVTerm in the URL as well as not (when FVTerm is set as the default for the website).
  • The installer will now set the FVTerm v4.0 IIS Application pool recycling settings to avoid issues caused by IIS defaults:
    • Disable Overlapped Recycle set TRUE to ensure any active data saves from the live FVTerm process are saved prior to the new process restoring the data, which includes active SAML 2.0 and Oauth2 OpenID Connect user profiles.
    • Recycling Regular Time Interval (minutes) changed to 0 (no regular recycle)
    • Shutdown time limit set to 5 minutes (default 90 seconds)
    • Idle Time-out (minutes) set to 0 (no timeout) from default 20 minutes.

 

Filed Under: Admin, Uncategorized, Web Terminal Emulation

Inventu Viewer+ Setups 2022F2

June 14, 2022 by ViewerAuthor

Improved Support for Concurrent User Licenses, New Diagnostics Dashboard and Additional Fixes and Enhancements

Inventu Viewer+ Base Product and Components

(Version: 6.0.69 June 22, 2022)

https://software.inventu.com/2022F2?dl=IVSetup64.exe (64bit)

FlyServer Emulation Service

  • Clustered sessions and user statistics / allocations further enhanced to enable better management of clustered servers.
  • For subscription renewals, the Inventu Viewer Emulation Service will detect a refreshed license avoiding the need for a service restart/downtime. This will occur within an hour of using the FVLicense tool to refresh the subscription, or with a Console port command provided to customers in instructions for renewing a subscription.
  • A new timeout for SSH Logon implemented which defaults to 1 minute for each phase (userID then password) so that an idle session that was never connected will timeout faster to keep sessions available. Set in the Host Configuration in Tuning: SSH Timeout for UserID and Password Entry.
  • List Console port command now includes Most sessions/users and uptime statistics in the returned XML
  • SSH Handler code hardened to prevent exceptions during multi-threaded impacts of stopping an active SSH session.
  • 3270 IND$File transfer receives were mis-handling the Telnet 0xFF escape character if in the received file data leading to incorrect data buffers and invalid file contents. Examples would be an XLS excel file received in binary mode.
  • ASCII screen scrolling was further enhanced to support rapid buffer receives from the host when the new “Scroll Cleared Screen Lines” Profile setting is active. Without the enhancement, additional screens buffered during rapid user “page downs” would not be sent to the client successfully.
  • Logging of buffers containing telnet 0xFF escapes that are part of unknown handshake sequences are now logged in the data folder even if tracing is not active.
  • During a service stop/restart, a new Event Log entry has been added so that the Diagnostics Dashboard events analyzer can differentiate from a controlled service stop and a crash or other termination. This also will log the maximum session/user activity during the execution of the service.
  • A number of Event Log entries were elevated to Error from Warning to ensure better use during diagnostics
  • SSH disconnect could cause rare thread race on the socket thread.
  • For ASCII protocols VTxxx, SCO-ANSI, XTerm added support for UTF-8 line/box-drawing characters. Not a full UTF-8 Unicode support—only the simple line-drawing characters also supported by the VT100+ emulations.
  • For clustered servers new internal detection of issues with free and active sessions and users (for user-based licenses). Internal repair functions implemented to re-build free and active linked-lists.
  • For clustered servers additional multi-threading protection implemented to address rare cases when a heavily loaded server resulted in damaged free and active session lists.
  • New session logging added to assist in diagnosing session issues with heavily loaded clustered servers, as well as standard servers.
  • For clustered servers with user-based licensing, if a server in the cluster was down or on hold, another server in the cluster that was allocating new sessions on behalf of the down server would mis-count each session as a new user session so that new users would not be able to connect.
  • User based licensing was not clearing stopped sessions from a user’s internal list in certain situations, resulting in reduced maximum sessions per user.

Diagnostics Dashboard (NEW!)

  • Access from the TaskBar Notification Icon context menu
  • New Administration tool for identifying active issues with the current Viewer emulation service and FVTerm.
  • New high-level Event Log analysis and display tool
  • Can save active diagnostic files and event log to a zip file for sending to Inventu Support
  • Can save and import active configuration components for backing-up or copying to another server to replicate a configuration—also for sending to Inventu Support if requested.

FVTerm Web Terminal Emulation

  • ASCII connections can now have all screens scrolled along with TTY style scrolling. This provides a large scrolling area in the terminal screen matching functionality of desktop emulators like Putty.  This is configured in the Advanced section of the Profile following the Scroll History Maximum Lines setting using the “Scroll Cleared Screen Lines” checkbox.
  • Added new setting to control scrolling for ASCII terminals—enables users to control whether a screen clear is scrolled or not—scrolling must be active in the Profile setting.
  • Updated the FVHealth.aspx and BalanceInfo.aspx load balancing components to use the HostConnection.availableLicenses instead of HostConnection.availableSessions so that load balancing in a user-based licensing will accommodate at-capacity situations better.
  • When a DeviceID or LUName is configured, the user can now include a Telnet/TLS port to connect to with the syntax LUName:port (example: AB22ZAZ:20992). This is for environments where users are given both an LUName as well as a host port for connection details.  The message has been tweaked (in all languages) to reflect the optional port entry.
  • AzureAD HTTP cookies can expire resulting in a blank userid in a connection—this is now detected so that a new AzureAD context can be acquired during connection. Usually this will not require the user to re-enter credentials.
  • Added new exception handler for the TermStart web service to protect against hacking / stack test attacks.
  • Implemented a number of fixes identified by penetration testing to further harden the FVTerm web application.
  • A regression was fixed with 5250 screens where an uncommonly used color for the background of a character cell would cause escape sequences appearing in the HTML instead of the color change.
  • Initialization of the websocket handler sometimes raced with the flyserver.exe service leading to incorrectly allocated structures.
  • New Web Server Security setting – Strict User Checking which defaults false and when checked/true, will validate active user identity with any reconnection to a session. In version 6.0.60 this was always on which can lead to “false negatives” in some browser and cookie management environments.
  • Websockets additional internal diagnostics and error recovery
  • Added exception handling for an IIS cookie decryption error caused by a cookie created on one server in a cluster then accessed in the other server when the first server has no more sessions.

Viewer MMC Console

  • New User-based Licensing support—can now right-click on a Server (User View) or a Cluster (All Users List View) and view active users. The view is grouped by user with each user’s active sessions displayed under the user’s ID.  For the Cluster, all users across the servers in the cluster are shown in alphabetic order.  Sessions for a user can be viewed like any other session.

ViewerLib API

  • Added a new property to the HostScreen class object: scrollClearedLines to help assist in the server-side management of this new VT/ASCII terminal profile option. The first implementation performed scrolling of cleared screens at the client, which then lost rapid screen sends by the host.  When scrollClearedLines is set true for an active HostScreen object, scrolling is managed in the service as well as the client.
  • Added new HostConnection readonly property- availableLicenses which is to provide better management of clustered servers with concurrent user This is used by the FVHealth.aspx load balancer inquiry instead of availableSessions which leads to inaccurate counts to be used when a server hits capacity in user-based licensing.  The new availableLicenses will return the session count for standard session-based licenses and return the user count for user-based licenses.
  • Cleared internal structure used in a number of commands that had rare negative impacts on results in the FlyServer service

Viewer Administration Console

  • Added “Most Sessions/Users” and “Uptime” statistics to the upper-right information area. Most sessions will provide the most sessions (or Users for user-based licensing) that were active at any one time during the current execution of the service

Viewer Taskbar Notification Tray Icon

  • Installer was incorrectly setting-up auto-start for this icon—it will now correctly auto-start when the server is restarted.
  • Re-aligned some of the menu items for the context/right-click menu
  • Added new Diagnostics Dashboard which is described in its own category

Profiles Mode Configuration

  • Profile: For ASCII terminal types a new Advanced setting enabling all screen data to be scrolled during a session.  This is configured in the Advanced section of the Profile following the “Scroll History Maximum Lines” setting using the “Scroll Cleared Screen Lines” checkbox.  Note that this is only visible if the Scroll History Maximum Lines setting is non-Zero.
  • Host Setting: when it is an ASCII type and SSH is selected, “SSH Timeout for UserID and Password Entry” is new. This defaults to 60 seconds and applies to each step.  If a user leaves a screen and doesn’t enter either the UserID or Password within the set time, the session is closed and available for another user.

Filed Under: Admin, Web Terminal Emulation

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Flynet Viewer Now Inventu Viewer+

June 15, 2020 Inventu Corporation Renamed Inventu Flynet Viewer As Inventu Viewer+

(Click Here For Details)

On this Site, any reference to Flynet Viewer also applies to Inventu Viewer+

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