geoSCOUT

geoSCOUT 9.0 Launcher Upgrade

geoSCOUT 9.0 Launcher Upgrade

With the release of geoSCOUT version 9.0 geoLOGIC has upgraded the geoSCOUT launcher. As part of the upgrade process to version 9.0, you should be upgrading the geoSCOUT launcher as geoSCOUT users will get a warning message stating that they need the new launcher. They can still use geoSCOUT even if the launcher isn’t upgraded but they will keep seeing the warning message every time they open geoSCOUT.

Warning message about the old geoSCOUT launcher

The geoSCOUT launcher upgrade can be a challenging task in a large environment when users don’t have local admin. In this post, I’ll detail what I’ve discovered about how the geoSCOUT launcher works and include a PowerShell script to upgrade the launcher.

Discovery

The geoSCOUT launcher seems to work by looking for a user’s GMAP.ini file saved in the user’s %AppData%, if that file isn’t present then the launcher will throw an error.

When you install geoSCOUT using the Desktop_Build_NonAdmin installer or the Desktop_Build installer both of them use the context of the path that executed the install to populate the user’s GMAP.ini file saved in %AppData%.

My theory on how part of the geoSCOUT launcher works is that it uses the user’s GMAP.ini file to find the geoSCOUT server and for version 8 it loads gsmainV8.exe from the Programs directory in the geoSCOUT network location.

The geoSCOUT version 9.0 launcher seems to work the same way as the version 8 launcher did except that instead of launching gsmainV8.exe it launches gsmap.exe. Technically speaking you could run geoSCOUT by just launching gsmap.exe but that isn’t the recommended way.

After the geoSCOUT upgrade to version 9.0 if a user is using a shortcut to gsmainV8.exe they will get the warning that their launcher is out of date and needs to be upgraded even if their geoSCOUT launcher has been upgraded on their system.

The way the geoSCOUT launcher works is important because it shows us that unlike the normal geoSCOUT user install the path you use to install the launcher doesn’t matter.

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geoSCOUT published remote access

geoSCOUT published remote access

I needed to get geoSCOUT working in Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon) but geoLOGIC doesn’t officially support publishing geoSCOUT to systems like Citrix, RD Web, and Horizon. Due to the way that geoSCOUT works you can’t just launch the geoSCOUT exe and have it work.

On the first launch a user would normally run the geoSCOUT Desktop_Build_NonAdmin_v8.exe installer which will create the App Data and the document files for the user. The creation of the App Data part is important because that is when it creates the reference to the geoSCOUT license file. If you try to just run the geoSCOUT Desktop_Build_NonAdmin_v8.exe install file outside of the path of your geoSCOUT license file it won’t install correctly.

Now a way to get around the issue is to have the user RDP into your session host that is publishing the application and have them run the non admin installer but that isn’t very seamless and is very time consuming.

My solution was to write a PowerShell script that launches before the user launches geoSCOUT.

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geoSCOUT 8.17 Launcher Upgrade

geoSCOUT 8.17 Launcher Upgrade

With the release of geoSCOUT version 8.17 geoLOGIC upgraded the geoSCOUT launcher but only included an upgrade file that needs to be ran as admin on each system and under each user account. Which is annoying in company setups where users don’t have local admin.

Technically speaking geoSCOUT still works even if you don’t run the geoSCOUT 8.17 launcher upgrade, the users just don’t get some of the new features and that’s not fun.

One of the changes geoLOGIC made with geoSCOUT 8.17 is the shortcuts. In the past the shortcuts would be set to start in the user’s documents folder but now they are set to start in program files.

Typically a program needs to run as admin when it is changing things beyond what a normal user account can change like system settings or files. With the 8.17 geoSCOUT launcher it is updating the geoSCOUT exe in program files and updating the system wide start menu shortcut with the updated start in info.

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