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By SurfingBob

I'm currently in the process of installing ITalc in all my labs that have windows XP clients, a 2003 server and also a samba share which I'll explain later. I'm pretty satisfied with it with the exception that any Classroom with over 20 machines becomes unuseable (all machines become unreachable even though you can remote with them). My only solution so far is dividing the labs into two groups.

Here are the things that I needed to setup for the clients and masters so I could easily deploy it.

1. Install a master so I can get the three keys I need. A share on the 2003 server for the Public key which I create on a master. During the future installs I point towards this share by copy and pasting the link. On some machines, typing out the address manually causes freezing so copy and pasting it is a sure thing to avoid this problem.
   
   
2. Create an invisible share on my samba for the public and private teacher keys which are created by that first master install. Why a samba share instead of Windows? The service itself seeks for this file and I haven't figured out a way to assign a local computer service read permissions on a windows server. Samba is helping me at the moment with this issue and the clients can find the keys no problem.
   
   It's easier to make these 3 keys available on network shares unless you don't have a box with samba. The other option is you'd have to copy it on every client and master so they can communicate with each other.
   
   
3. Create registry file with proper configurations. I have one for the master and one for the clients. The first registry setting is the path to my samba share with the teacher keys which clients and masters use. The other setting is for the windows firewall. Did you forget about the windows firewall? I certainly did when I first tried testing it! I simply add both ica.exe and userinfo.exe to authorizedapplications and luckily registry importing makes this an easy task. I don't know if userinfo.exe needed to be added but I didn't take any chances.
   
   Here's how my italc.reg file looks like.

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\iTALC Solutions\iTALC\keypathsprivate]
   "teacher"="\\\\SambaServer\\share\\iTALC\\keys\\private\\teacher\\key"
    
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\iTALC Solutions\iTALC\keypathspublic]
   "teacher"="\\\\SambaServer\\share\\iTALC\\keys\\public\\teacher\\key"
    
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\DomainProfile\AuthorizedApplications\List]
   "C:\\Program Files\\iTALC\\ica.exe"="C:\\Program Files\\iTALC\\ica.exe:*:Enabled:ica"
   "C:\\Program Files\\iTALC\\userinfo.exe"="C:\\Program Files\\iTALC\\userinfo.exe:*:Enabled:userinfo"

   
   
   

4. Fourth and final setting is to put globalsettings on a server share and making sure the masters are pointing towards it. The reasoning behind this is to add computers and classrooms only once since I have multiple teachers who are using this. Make sure they only have read permissions so they don't mess it up and delete classes and computers. I have full rights to the file so I simply add the computers and classes myself.
   
   Here's my IMA.reg file that I apply to masters only.

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\iTALC Solutions\iTALC\paths]
   "globalconfig"="\\\\WindowsServer\\Share\\italc\\globalconfig.xml"

I hope this helps some for anyone who plans to install this in the future. Once you get these things setup everything will work great. My only issue with the program so far is as I said before, if you plan on having groups of over 20 computers the screens will become unreachable, even if you can still remote with them. I'd like to figure out how to fix this but I haven't had time yet. I have theories and I'll try to figure out a solution this week.

Also, this is the command to unregister the service if you need to uninstall or install it to another directory like I had to do.

c:\program files\italc\ica -unregisterservice