InterSystems supports use of the InterSystems IRIS Docker images it provides on Linux only. Rather than executing containers as native processes, as on Linux platforms, Docker for Windows creates a Linux VM running under Hyper-V, the Windows virtualizer, to host containers. These additional layers add complexity that prevents InterSystems from supporting Docker for Windows at this time.

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This time I want to talk about something not specific to InterSystems IRIS, but that I think is important if you want to work with Docker and your server at work is a PC or laptop with Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise.

As you likely know, containers technology comes basically from Linux world and, nowadays, is on Linux hosts were it shows maximum potential. Those who use Windows on a normal basis see that both, Microsoft and Docker, have done important efforts during these last years that allow us to run containers based on Linux images on our Windows system in a really easy way... but it's something not supported for production systems and, this is the big problem, is not reliable if we want to keep persistent data outside of containers, in the host system,... mostly due to the big differences between Windows and Linux file systems. In the end, Docker for Windows itself uses a small linux virtual machine (MobiLinux) to run the containers... it does it transparently for the windows user... and it works perfectly well if, as I said, you don't require that your databases survive longer than the container...

Well,...let's get to the point,... the point is that many times, to avoid issues and simplify, we need a full Linux system and, if our server is based on Windows, the only way of having it is through a virtual machine. At least till WSL2 in Windows is released, but that will be another story and sure it'll take a bit of time to become robust enough.

In this article, I'll tell you, step by step, how to install an environment where you'll be able to work, if you need it, with Docker containers on an Ubuntu system in your Windows server. Let's go...

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Hi! As a developer who was forced to move from Mac to Windows (temporary) I found some things a bit confusing. In this article I would like to talk about some tweaks I made to make my experience smoother. I think it can help not only Mac users who need to use Windows environment (for ex. in VMs), but also can help some Windows users to make some things more convenient. Of course, all the points are subjective, the best setup is one that works for you.

All the tweaks are related to Windows 10 as I don’t have an access to Windows 11 at the moment.

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Article
· Apr 21, 2021 1m read
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V in IRIS Terminal

It's possible to enable Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V in IRIS Terminal for Windows.

To do that, open Terminal and select Edit > User Settings and enable Windows edit accelerators. This setting specifies whether the Terminal enables the common Windows edit shortcuts (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Shift+V), in addition to the basic Terminal edit shortcuts (Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert).

After that Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V would work.

Also <SYNTAX> errors after incorrect copy/paste go away.

Docs.

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· Mar 6, 2016 2m read
Who does Windows think I am?

When my COS code is executing in a Caché process it might want to interact with the host operating system. For the purpose of this post I'm focusing on a Windows host, but much of it applies to other host OS platforms as well.

A common example of host OS interaction is when my process wants to read from or write to a file. What credentials will apply when Windows is checking whether or not to allow me access to the file?

To answer that we need to consider another question. How did our process start?

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· Jun 12, 2017 1m read
Setting the Windows service account

I recently helped a site investigate a problem that appeared after they upgraded their Windows instance of Caché from 2015.1 to 2017.1. A terminal session launched from the server's desktop cube was unable to run OS-level commands using the $ZF(-1) function. For instance, using the no-op command "REM" as follows:

write $zf(-1,"rem")

was returning -1, indicating that the Windows command could not be issued.

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Terminal scripts can be used to run pre-designed commands on the terminal, like a batch file. You can write anything that can be executed on terminal, like for loop, if else and so on, inside Terminal scripts. In this article, I will show you how to call Terminal scripts, how to use parameters in Terminal scripts and how to avoid session disconnected when running Terminal scripts. If you have any information about how to use Terminal scripts or you have any feedback, please feel free to leave a comment.

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Article
· Jan 16, 2017 15m read
Part I – Thoughts about package manager

Have you ever thought what could be a reason why some development environment (database, language) would eventually become popular? What part of this popularity could be explain as language quality? What by new and idioms approaches introduced by early language adopters? What is due to healthy ecosystem collaboration? What is due to some marketing genius?

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I have recently come across a problem saving TrakCare reports as PDF files while using the MS Edge browser on a Windows 10 PC. Whenever a user selected the Save to PDF option the window Tab would crash and reset. The event was trapped and viewable in the Windows Events Viewer and showed a Fault in the AcroPDFImpl64.dll.

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When you install an IRIS or Caché instance on Windows Server, you'll usually need to install it under a specific user account that has network access permissions. This is very handy when you needs to access network resources for creating files or directly accessing printers.

TL;DR: see key takeaways at the bottom!

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Hey everyone!

I recently learnt something new while working with WRC on an issue, and I wanted to share with everyone on the off chance it could help someone else.

Scenario:

Files are being inexplicably written to a folder on your server and, due to the number of files in the folder and general system throughput, it is not possible to work through the files to track down the source.

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