EOLF with VirtualBox on Mac OS-X host - Works
Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 3:41 pm
We got this setup working fine on a Mac OS 10.5 (Intel) host. The guest OS is Windows XP.
Make sure you set up a "USB filter" for the smartcard reader, reported as "Gemplus USB SmartCard Reader [0100]", and plug it in only after booting Windows XP in VirtualBox.
We run EOLF in one VirtualBox for the whole office. Other users connect to EOLF via remote desktop. So no need to install a server version in VirtualBox.
The guest OS can accesses our file server via Samba. The required PDF files are generated by our Macs on the file server, where they are retrieved by EOLF. Since we don't use the PDF handling software provided by the EPO this way, we have come across some glitches - the apostrophe character often turned out as white squares in the documents received by the examiners. This appears to be an issue within the EPO, when they transfer the documents from the online filing server to Phoenix, the system used by the examiners. The documents appear fine on the filing server and get garbled in the transfer to Phoenix.
Although we finally got EOLF working on non-Windows platforms this way, we hardly use it any longer - since there is no connectivity with our PMS, it takes way longer to prepare a filing with EOLF than a paper file with our PMS...
--JJJ
Make sure you set up a "USB filter" for the smartcard reader, reported as "Gemplus USB SmartCard Reader [0100]", and plug it in only after booting Windows XP in VirtualBox.
We run EOLF in one VirtualBox for the whole office. Other users connect to EOLF via remote desktop. So no need to install a server version in VirtualBox.
The guest OS can accesses our file server via Samba. The required PDF files are generated by our Macs on the file server, where they are retrieved by EOLF. Since we don't use the PDF handling software provided by the EPO this way, we have come across some glitches - the apostrophe character often turned out as white squares in the documents received by the examiners. This appears to be an issue within the EPO, when they transfer the documents from the online filing server to Phoenix, the system used by the examiners. The documents appear fine on the filing server and get garbled in the transfer to Phoenix.
Although we finally got EOLF working on non-Windows platforms this way, we hardly use it any longer - since there is no connectivity with our PMS, it takes way longer to prepare a filing with EOLF than a paper file with our PMS...
--JJJ