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Phindows is a connectivity tool that lets you use Microsoft Windows platforms to connect to and interact with graphical Photon applications running on a remote Neutrino computer.
This guide includes:
When you start Phindows, it displays a Connect dialog where you can specify the type of connection (TCP/IP or direct-connect serial), compression type, cache settings, and whether to connect to an existing connection. Various connection options are available, but the defaults usually work well.
Once you've chosen the connection parameters, click Connect to cause Phindows to connect with these parameters. To record these settings permanently before making the connection, click Save. These saved settings become the defaults for all future Phindows sessions.
If you check Connect to Existing Photon Session and select List, you'll be prompted with a list of existing sessions on the target machine. These sessions may include the main /dev/photon, and any other sessions created by phrelay. Private photon sessions keep running if a Phindows connection is unexpectedly terminated (if phrelay, Phindows or the network connection crashes, for example), or if you choose to not terminate the session when exiting Phindows normally. Active Photon sessions are listed in /dev, named ph followed by the process number of the phrelay that created them.
If you request a TCP/IP connection, you must also specify the Internet address of the Neutrino computer you're connecting to (e.g. 198.53.31.1), or the hostname. If the remote computer has been configured properly, you should see a Photon login prompt, at which point you're connected and running Photon.
If you request a serial connection, you must specify the COM port (e.g. COM1 or COM2). If you don't specify a baud rate, Phindows uses the current Windows default settings. With a serial connection, Phindows initially acts as a simple text terminal that lets you type commands directly to the modem (e.g. ATDT1-613-591-0934). Once connected, log into Neutrino and then issue the command:
This command causes Phindows to drop out of text-terminal mode and begin acting as a Photon graphical terminal. A Photon login screen should appear at this point.
If you're using TCP/IP, there are several configuration issues that you need to check before you can use Phindows. The configuration should already be set correctly; if not, make the changes described below.
First, the remote QNX host must have TCP/IP installed and running. In addition, inetd must be running with the following additional items added to the indicated TCP/IP configuration files:
In /etc/inetd.conf, add the line:
phrelay stream tcp nowait root /usr/photon/bin/phrelay phrelay
phrelay stream tcp nowait root /usr/bin/phrelay phrelay -x
In /etc/services, add the line:
phrelay 4868/tcp
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These lines are already present in the configuration files, but they're commented out. Just remove the number sign (#) to add these entries. |
These two entries cause inetd to listen for incoming requests to establish a new Photon session. When a request is detected (from a remote Phindows client in our case), inetd automatically establishes a full TCP/IP connection and launches phrelay on that connection. Phindows is then fully connected to the local machine.
For more information about inetd, /etc/inetd.conf, and phrelay, see the QNX Neutrino Utilities Reference.
All that remains now is to configure the Windows client to support TCP/IP. The exact way to do this depends on the type of Windows platform you're using, what services have already been installed on that client, and whether you're using Ethernet or dialup networking over SLIP/PPP (see the Microsoft documentation for help with this).
You can use the Phindows Connect dialog to specify one of these data-compression options:
Phindows makes very extensive use of data caching techniques to minimize the amount of data that needs to be transmitted from the host to the client machine. Thanks to this intensive data caching, Phindows is usable even on modem-link speeds as low as 9600 baud.
In addition, Phindows and phrelay can optionally compress cache files (larger than 63,000 bytes) using the gzip utility to further improve performance. See the -z command-line option below.
Most large static data objects in Photon are tagged with a unique 32-bit ID, or tag. Tagged objects include bitmap data, image data, and color palettes. These objects are generally tagged when first created by the Photon program developers. This process is accomplished automatically by the Photon development tools, so the program developer is, for the most part, not even aware that this is taking place.
Photon passes these tags along with the data objects as they flow through the Photon event space. The end result is that Photon graphics drivers (such as phrelay) almost always have available a small, unique, precalculated tag to identify the larger Photon graphical objects.
The host side of a Phindows connection, phrelay, has the job of transmitting the graphical Photon events over a communications link to a Phindows client. Phindows and phrelay use a private protocol that allows these large graphical objects to be sent only once to the remote client. All subsequent references to that data object are made by passing the small tag, knowing that the Phindows client has a local copy of the entire data object. Over time, commonly encountered objects (such as icons and backdrops) all become cached.
Phindows not only caches these tagged data objects in local memory, but also spills least-recently used objects to disk automatically and saves all cached objects to disk when you close Phindows. The next time that you start Phindows, it preloads its in-memory cache from the most recently encountered disk cache and informs the remote phrelay session which objects it already knows about. This means that after a graphical object is seen once within Phindows, it never, in general, has to be transmitted again, even in subsequent Phindows sessions.
The Phindows Connect dialog lets you tune the size of the in-memory data cache and the maximum amount of disk storage to reserve for most recently encountered objects. The default values of 16384K for RAM cache and 80M for disk cache are usually adequate.
In normal operation when connected to a remote host, phindows receives all text as bitmaps which have already been rendered by the Neutrino font manager. This mode of operation is best in most situations, but at very slow connection speeds you can improve performance by configuring Phindows to use local Windows fonts.
Phindows uses local Windows .ttf (TrueType) and .phf fonts rather than font bitmaps rendered by phrelay, if it finds them in its font directory. This feature is available in phrelay 6.3 or greater and Phindows 2.13 or greater.
To use this feature, you need to:
You can check which fonts are being picked up from the Neutrino or Windows side by starting phrelay with the - V and -D command-line options. For example, you can change the /etc/inetd.conf file to start phrelay as follows: phrelay -x -V -Ddbg_log.txt.
Then restart phrelay (for example, with slay -s HUP inetd) to get debug output sent to /dbg_log.txt. With the -V, debug lines for all text rendered using a font present at the Phindows end are recorded. To see which fonts are still being rendered by phrelay and sent as bitmaps, use the -VVV option, which produces more verbose debug information. In the resulting debug output look for the string render opts, which is output every time phrelay calls PfRenderText(). The line before this one gives the font filename, and a few lines after is an ASCII representation of the rendered text bitmap.
When connecting to a machine running an older version of phrelay, it's possible to exceed the draw buffer limit. You can use the Windows font rendering option to reduce the draw buffer size (see Using Windows fonts).
Phindows supports taking screenshots with the snapshot utility, or any other application that calls PgReadScreen(). When Phindows is connected to an existing Photon session (using -n), the screenshot is read directly from the original display without any special processing.
When Phindows is connected to a private Photon session (-n isn't specified), a copy of the screen contents inside the Phindows window is sent from Phindows to the Neutrino machine via phrelay. If the link speed is slow and the screen contents are large and complex, this may take some time to complete. Watch for the status messages Phindows displays in its title bar for an indication of send progress. The screen data is compressed according to the same compression settings used for draw data received by Phindows. The BPE setting often results in better compression ratios than RLL, but requires significantly more CPU resources to calculate. (Gzip compression is not implemented for screen capture data.)
Screen captures gathered by Phindows are 24 bits-per-pixel images, no matter what the local and remote graphics settings are. If the Phindows double buffering feature is not turned on and you are not using Windows® Vista®, the Phindows window must be positioned correctly and can't be covered by any other windows.
PHINDOWS.EXE supports several command-line options. You typically add these parameters to the command when you create the icon or shortcut to launch Phindows. The options are:
If you use a direct serial connection, then the comm port's baud rate is set to this value as well, unless you give a specific baud rate (commbaud). If you don't specify a baud rate, the Windows default baud rate is used.
The effective link speed is used by Photon to decide if certain draw operations should be performed in a more simple bandwidth-saving way. This option allows you to specify a value independent of the serial port baud rate, if you wish. The effective link speed is also used for TCP/IP connections, in which case it defaults to 10000000 (10Mbps). If you have a faster network or don't want Photon to speed-optimize any draw operations (such as divider column resizing) then specify 100000000, which is 100Mbps.
Introduced in Phindows version 3, double buffering greatly improves the speed at which portions of the Phindows main window get redrawn after they are damaged.
When double buffering is enabled, all draws received from the remote QNX system will be performed in an offscreen memory context and then blitted to the main window. This blitting can affect the performance and CPU usage of Phindows, so a number of blitting methods have been made available for the user to choose from. In theory, because of the hardware acceleration features of most modern video cards, blitting within video memory should be faster than blitting from system memory into video memory.
Phindows can use two different methods to access video ram (Direct3D and DirectDraw), or it can blit using system memory. The specific software/hardware configuration of your computer will determine which method is faster. Direct3D is preferred, because it offers the most flexibility for future enhancements. To use this method you must have DirectX 9.0c (or later) installed on your computer. If the correct version of DirectX is not available, or if there is a failure initializing Direct3D, Phindows will fall back to using an older DirectDraw interface. If DirectDraw fails to initialize, or if it can't get access to video ram, then double buffering will be disabled. In order to enable double buffering with no video ram available, you must specify the "system memory" option.
The double buffering method choices are described in greater detail below:
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Windows Vista (Windows Aero) makes use of the Desktop Compositing Engine
(DCE) to implement new transparencies, live thumbnails, and various other on-screen effects. This is achieved by having each application
window drawn off-screen and then composited. With the DCE enabled, much of Phindows' built-in double buffering is redundant. To save
video RAM and to increase performance, you may want to disable the Phindows double buffering feature.
In some cases under Windows Vista the DCE will not be enabled; for example if the system does not have a DirectX 9.0 (Shader Model 2.0) capable video card. In those cases Phindows should do its own double buffering. For more information on Aero and the DCE, refer to the Windows Vista documentation. |
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Setting this option turns on RLL compression and CRC error checking by default. You can turn it off with the -o option. |
Adjusting this setting has the most effect when end-to-end response time is slow compared with throughput, such as over a modem or when there are many network hops between the local and remote ends.
Combine options by addition, e.g. to specify BPE and CRC, select 9. You can't have BPE and RLL compression at the same time. If you select both, only BPE compression is used.
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Turning off antialiased font support can improve performance over a slow communications link, at the expense of visual accuracy. Antialiased text is rendered with 8 bits per pixel instead of 1, requiring more data transfer. Using RLL or BPE compression reduces the performance impact of displaying antialiased fonts. |
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Setting this option turns on RLL compression by default. You can turn it off with the -o option. |
Both phrelay and Phindows run the gzip utility using an external call. You must ensure that the gzip utility is available at both ends:
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You should use single quotes to allow arguments to be passed, and double quotes around the executable name if it contains embedded spaces. |
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If you don't specify either -t or -m, Phindows displays the Connect dialog asking for communications parameters, and displays settings based on the last saved settings. When either -t or -m are specified, the Connect dialog isn't displayed, and settings are applied from the last saved session, or from defaults if there's no saved settings. Settings are saved to the phindows.ini file, whose location is shown in the About dialog. |
The normal mode of using Phindows (without the -n option) causes a private session of Photon to be started on the QNX machine you've connected to. Your Photon session is independent of everyone else's.
The -n command-line option lets a Phindows client see and interact with any Photon session already running on one of the QNX machines in the same QNX network you've connected to. An exact copy of the remote Photon user's screen is displayed on your Windows desktop. In addition, you can use your mouse and keyboard to interact directly with that remote Photon session. You can, in effect, take over the remote screen as if you were sitting there.
For example, if you want to provide support to a remote QNX site that's running Photon, dial up and log into that QNX machine using Phindows with a command line similar to:
phindows.exe -mcom2 -n/dev/photon
Log in and start phrelay as follows:
At this point, phrelay is informed that a connection to an already-existing Photon session called /dev/photon is requested (i.e. the Photon running on the local console). The phrelay command creates a graphics region to overlay the entire console graphics region, so that both your mouse and the remote mouse can control the same cursor. You can then share that remote desktop with the remote user.
This type of remote connectivity is convenient for a variety of purposes, including:
Of course, there's no need to have a human actually sitting at the remote console. Nor is there a need even to have a physical screen and keyboard at the remote site. You can use Photon connectivity to control remote sites that are completely unstaffed. This not only saves on travel costs involved in remote diagnostics and maintenance, but also saves in hardware costs at the remote site (since you can eliminate the cost of keyboards and display screens).
Suppose you need to look at a Photon application running on some QNX machine other than the one with the modem you're connecting to. Not a problem. You can use the -n option to specify the full QNX pathname of any Photon session on that remote QNX network. So if you're dialing into one QNX node, but want to look at and interact with Photon running on another node's console, just use:
When you connect to the QNX network (initially logged into the first node), start:
The phrelay program recognizes that you really want to be connected to a Photon on the second node, so it automatically migrates itself to that node, but continues to use the modem you dialed in on (i.e. the modem on the first node). Since QNX is an inherently distributed operating system, this happens seamlessly and efficiently.
Suppose the QNX machine you log into has lots of modems, but not a lot of spare CPU or memory. You want to start up a private Photon session and discover that node 2 has lots of spare resources (in QNX, any node will do). You can specify this with the following command:
If you're connecting to a QNX machine that's using a color palette other than default.pal, you can specify the palette file using the -P command line option. The Windows display must be set to 256 colors (8-bit color) for this option to work.
For example, if the QNX machine you are connecting to uses the grey.pal palette file, use the following command-line option:
phindows.exe -P%QNX_HOST%\usr\photon\palette\grey.pal
You can use both Phindows and phditto (which comes standard with Photon) to stretch a single Photon space across multiple desktops. Some (or all) of these desktops can be QNX computers, some (or all) of these desktops can be Windows desktops, and some (or all) can be X workstations as well.
The -x, -y, -h, and -w options are provided in both phditto and Phindows to make this possible. Here's how they work:
Suppose you have a QNX machine running Photon on a console in 1024x768 resolution. You now want to stretch the Photon space to include the 1024x768 Windows screen you've placed immediately to the right of the QNX screen (creating a 2048x768 Photon desktop). You simply need to start Phindows on the Windows machine with:
phindows.exe -x1024 -n/dev/photon
When the connection is made (TCP/IP works well), you'll notice that the Photon desktop manager, which is normally on the bottom of the Photon screen, stretches to include the bottom of the right-hand MS-Windows screen as well. You can now take either mouse, start up new applications, drag them from screen to screen, and otherwise take advantage of your increased workspace.
With careful use of the -x and -y (and -h and -w) options, you can create many interesting combinations (an array of monitors forming one huge Photon display, multimedia presentations, etc.)
The normal mode of Dittoing someone else's Photon session (specifying -n) is to have a single cursor that can be controlled by either the local or remote user. Similarly, keystrokes from either keyboard can be entered into the application with keyboard focus, which is normally what you want for a remote training or debugging session.
But sometimes you may want the remote user to carry on working without necessarily being affected by what you're doing. You can do this by specifying the -u option on the Phindows command line. In this mode, your mouse, keyboard, and display are completely independent of the other user's console. Both of you see two cursors (your cursor is solid, while the other person's cursor is dimmed or ghosted), but the two cursors behave independently.
In Photon terminology, you're running in your own private input group. You're free to roam around the Photon space without affecting the other user. Your mouse clicks and keystrokes are directed to whatever application has input focus for your input group. You can therefore start up new applications anywhere in the Photon space (probably in a different Photon console to be polite). Unless the other user chooses to roam over to the part of the desktop you're working in, he or she is otherwise unaffected by your presence there.
There's no built-in limit to how many concurrent users can share the same workspace in this manner, although it's doubtful that you'd practically want to have more than two at any one time. It's far more likely that if multiple users are connected to a single QNX machine, they each run in their own private Photon workspace (the default behavior of Phindows) and communicate with each other using the built-in Photon connectivity facilities, such as Jump Gates and msgpad (QNX 4 only), and phditto. A single QNX machine can easily support dozens of such Phindows clients, provided it's fast enough and has enough RAM.
Offscreen context support is enabled by default, though you can turn it off with the -OO option.
Offscreen context support has some limitations:
The -s command-line option simplifies the task of creating shortcuts to Photon applications within the Windows desktop.
By using the -s option, you can create an icon or shortcut on the Windows desktop that starts a Photon application automatically (within a private Phindows session). With proper specification of the remote Window manager options, it's possible to make that Photon application look like it's a native Windows application.
When phrelay runs on the QNX host machine, it looks up the Photon service specified with the -s option in a configuration file (/etc/config/phrelay[.node]). If a matching service is found, phrelay launches the specified Photon command instead of the default Photon desktop. You can specify optional Window Manager options, but the default mode is to start the remote Photon application such that it looks and behaves as if it were a native Windows application.
You typically use the -U option along with the -s option to specify a QNX userid to use when running the remote Photon command. If you don't give a userid, and the phrelay service doesn't specify a default one, Photon pops up a login dialog requesting the QNX userid before proceeding. By specifying a userid with the -U option, you can avoid this login dialog.
For example, if you create a Windows shortcut as follows:
phindows -tx.x.x.x -svpoker -Ujoe
where the IP address x.x.x.x specifies the TCP/IP address of the Neutrino host, and the phrelay configuration file on the host (/etc/config/phrelay) contains the following line:
vpoker % /usr/photon/bin/vpoker
then joe could directly launch a Photon vpoker session (running as QNX userid joe) on his Windows desktop by simply clicking on the icon or shortcut.
See phrelay for a description of the configuration file format.
Phindows uses the following environment variables:
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