Can Liquit install applications on a thin client? In other words: can Liquit bypass the UWF (universal write filter) on thin clients? Recently we’ve received these questions more than once, so perfect timing to write a short blog on the topic and explain how this works.
The short answer is: Yes we can
We have tested our agent on a couple of Thin Clients, but to make this work make sure you have a Windows Based Thin Client with the Windows 10 operating system, including the Windows 10 IoT versions.
The agent needs to be in the ‘base’ installation of your thin client. The Liquit agent is installed under ‘system authority’ (but is off course changeable if you want another account)
Make sure to follow the configuration instructions of the Liquit agent, this is the number one asked question at our ServiceDesk. Information can be found on our extensive documentation site.
The Liquit agent runs under an account which is allowed to do installations and upgrades. Now you can manage your thin client with Liquit workspace.
This can be:
- Running a deployment
- Installing applications
- Updating applications
- Creating drive- and printer mappings
- All the other stuff you might need to do on your thin client.
Write filter enabled, can Liquit help?
Again, Yes! Off course everything depends on the way you use your write filter, but Liquit can bypass the write filter so you can install persistent application (updates) on your thin client, even on user request!
Here’s how that works.
In this example we focus on the Universal Write Filter (UWF) from Microsoft. There are many more write filters and if you have an alternative write filter, please contact us for help if required.
We assume that the write filter is already enabled and configured on the Thin Client.
Since the UWF is built in in the Microsoft Windows 10 IoT builds, you can control it with PowerShell. This is useful for Liquit scenarios. Due to the fact that our agent runs under a System account, we are able to launch and run a powershell command. This helps us to disable the UWF, so we can do installations.
NB: Powershell commands for the UWF can be found here:
How to configure an application in Liquit to be installed on a thin client.
You can create a ‘smart’ application which can run on thin clients but also on non-thin clients using our smart icons.
In this example we show you how to set it up for a thin client with by-passing the write filter:
Step one: Create a deployment for your thin clients and setup the right filters:
I used ‘kiosk mode’ as filter in this demo
Step two: Create a package to disable the write filter, this can also been done in the application package itself for in-place upgrading applications on the thin client when the user clicks on it.
Apply the packages to the deployment starting with the write filter disable package and close with the write filter enable package.
NB: The uploaded script contains a the following parameters for example. These may not be suitable for your environment and are just per example.
For a more detailed configuration refer to the Microsoft documentation site for all configuration parameters.
