CTX-Blog

If you are already working with Merchandising Server, you will probably know this problem.

Citrix provides an update for his Offline –Plugin that eliminates 45 bugs. The update 6.0.1 is available as regular download since many weeks now but if you try to find the update on your Merchandising Server you won’t find it. Even a manual rescan of the available plugins doesn’t help

The reason is a missing XML file, which Merchandising Server needs to control the installation and configuration of the plugins. Apparently Citrix won’t make this XML file available to the public, see Citrix Blog: App Streaming-6.0.1 LCM Update

I have therefore taken the time to have a look at the following resources:

- Citrix-TV
- Citrix eDocs
- Metadata Reference

and finally created my own XML file.

To save your time, I will provide you with the XML file needed here: XenAppStreamingMetaData.xml

On the Merchandising Server it is now possible to upload the actual Offline-Plugin together with the new XML file. After that step you can deploy the update through standard deliveries as usual.

Why Citrix doesn’t provide this file itself is a miracle to me. In fact this behavior doesn’t help to convince people to use Merchandising Server. I hope Citrix is rethinking the way they provide updates to Merchandising Server in the future…

Regards
Ecki

I recently stumbled uppon a really weired problem with 32bit icon support in XenApp. Under certain circumstances the AMC won’t show the option for 32bit icon support in the farm properties even if all prerequisites are perfectly met. We found out the reason for that behaviour only by accident.

The problem can be seen with all versions of Presentation Server 4.5 and XenApp 5.0 for w2k3 as well as for w2k8.

If the problem hits you, the farm properties won’t show the option for 32bit icon support, but there will only be a blank space

The reason for this odd behaviour can be found in the configuration of the farm-discovery. I sometimes use LOCALHOST as the hostname for discovery. This is helpful in situations where you have roaming profiles and IIS is not installed on the XenApp servers.

But if you configure discovery that way there will be no 32bit icon option in the AMC.

If you change the discovery option back to the local server

the missing option reappeares again.

You can toggle that behaviour as you like. Admittedly this is not a common problem but it is odd and if you happen to see it, you will be warned…

Regards
Ecki

After the update to Vista/Windows 7, mapping of the UserHome drive fails silently at logon. All other drive mappings made by a logon script are successful. This happens always if the UserHome is mapped through the AD user-object. UserHome mapping configured by GPO is not affected. There are no error messages logged and it is hard to find a reason for this behavior

Disabling UAC helps, but should not be the final solution, since it opens up many security holes.

Not really a Citrix problem but annoying if you happen to stumble upon it. Since it took me some time to find a solution, i thought it might be a good idea to post it here.

The following registry key allows again for a successful UserHome mapping:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“EnableLinkedConnections”=dword:00000001

The original solution has been posted here.

Regards
Ecki

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your XenServer environment allways with you on a USB disk ?

Wouldn’t it be nice, if this USB disk would function with your own notebook ?

And that you don’t need a second machine to run XenCenter on it ?

That this is possible and how to achieve this, is documented in my last tutorial. In this tutorial we will install XenServer on a USB harddisk attached to a laptop, then install X server and GNOME on this disk and then run an RDP session to a VM running on the XenServer and providing us with XenCenter.

A “demo in a box”

The tutorial can be downloaded here: “XenServer_and_Gnome_on_your_USB_disk_EN.pdf”
For the moment, this tutorial is availabel only in German, but i will upload an english version soon, so stay tuned…
The english version is now available too…

Regards
Ecki

Some days ago, Microsoft officialy released IE 8.0. Since IE 8.0 will be available trough Windows Update soon, more and more users will hit existing AAC deployments with this browser. Unfortunately this is not working as expected. This is, how an AAC portal page looks like in IE 8.0 with default settings:

The layout is crushed, links are missing and OWA is nearly unusable

A small change in the file C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\CitrixSessionInit\NUI.aspx solves the display issue by forcing IE 8.0 into IE 7.0 compatibility mode.

It is sufficient to add the following line in the header of the NUI.aspx file:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ />

Your header might look like this after the change:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Citrix Access Gateway</title>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.1" />
<meta name="CODE_LANGUAGE" content="C#" />
<meta name="vs_defaultClientScript" content="JavaScript" />
<meta name="vs_targetSchema" content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5" />
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="themes/default/images/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" />
<base id="baseElement" href="" runat="server" />
<link id="cssElement" rel="stylesheet" href="" runat="server" />
<!--[if IE]>
<style type="text/css">

Immediately your portal is rendered again as it should be

This is not a final solution for the problem, but until Citrix releases a fix for this issue it will do…

Regards
Ecki

All available documentation regarding “Single Sign On” or “Credential pass-through” with Smart Card and Citrix clients is limited to the Program Neighborhood client only, as can be seen exemplarily at Brianmadden . I don’t use this client in customer projects for a couple of years now but use the PNAgent or the Web client instead.

With these clients, a pass-through of the Smart Card PIN didn’t work, because they do not read their settings from the APPSRV.INI, which would allow for the neccessary settings.

Since client version 10.0, an Active Directory Group Policy Template can be found in every client installation directory, named “icaclient.adm”. All clients, starting with 10.0 now read the policy settings first and make use of the APPSRV.INI only in case, no policy is defined. This new feature allows now for a “Single Sign On” with SmartCard and PNAgent.

Here is, what you need to do, to get it up and running:

1. On the Presentation Server /XenApp Server

• Confirm proper operation by logging in to a full desktop on the Citrix server. Insert a Smart Card and it should begin reading it. Enable “Trust requests sent to the XML Service”. This is necessary if using smart card pass through logon.

2. On the Web Interface Server

• SSL must be configured and active (a web server certificate has to be installed) and the “Directory Service Mapping” has to be activated. This option can be found in the IIS Manager below the properties of the “Web Sites” folder:



• The Web Interface site itself must now be configured. Open the Citrix Access Suite Management Console on the Web Interface server and run discovery if necessary to find the Web Interface site you wish to work with.
  Under “Configure Authentication” select “Smart Card with Passthrough”.

3. Registry

• Check HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\ICA-tcp the value for “UseDefaultGina” should be 0 (1 disables the CtxGina).

4. Active Directory Policy

• Import the ADM template into a Policy
• Go to the “User Configuration” of the policy, leave the Computer part set to “not configured”. The following settings have to be enabled:



• <PolicyName>\User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Citrix Components\Presentation Server Client\User Authentication\Smart Card Authentication has to be “Enabled” and “Allow Smart Card Authentication” and “Use pass-through authentication for PIN” have to be activated.

• Leave everything else to “Not Configured”, provided that you are testing just Smart Card and PIN pass-through.

Now “Single Sign On” with Smart Card and PNAgent should work

Unfortunately these instructions only work for Windows XP and Server 2003. At the moment, no Citrix client, including 11.0, allows for PIN pass-through with Vista and 2008 Server

Here are some more interesting links:

• Error: Smartcard support is not allowed on pass through servers
• Internet Explorer 7 Known Issues
• Readme for Web Interface 4.6 for Presentation Server – German

Regards
Ecki

I had to upgrade the document, because a customer wanted to set the color of the bar to a dark blue. The caption inside the bar could not be read anymore after this change, so we had to change the color of the caption to white. This way we got the contrast needed back. How to do that is added to the document now.

The howto is written in german. A translation into english is not available at the moment. Since the pdf utilizes a lot of pictures, you might be able to understand it anyway. As soon as i find the time, i will provide a translated version. Until then, you can download the german version here: AAC4_5_CustomizeLogonPoint_Rev1.1_DE.pdf

Regards
Ecki

To adjust the look of an AAC LogonPoint at the CI of a company is not as easy as it is with a Citrix Web Interface deployment. In the following PDF i will show you a way to get there anyway.

The howto is written in german. A translation into english is not available at the moment. Since the pdf utilizes a lot of pictures, you might be able to understand it anyway. As soon as i find the time, i will provide a translated version. Until then, you can download the german version here: AAC4_5_CustomizeLogonPoint_Rev1.1_DE.pdf

This is, what your LogonPoint could look like after reading this document:

Additional documentation about customizing an AAC LogonPoint can be found here:

And here you can find a currently very interesting article about AAC and FireFox 3.0:

Regards
Ecki

I recently had a customer that wanted Internet Explorer to be published as a locked down version without toolbars and userinterface. The goal was to publish a browser based application to allow for a smart card rollout and not allowing users to browse away from this site. The search for a solution was harder than expected.

The solution most frequently found with Google was the built in “kiosk mode” of Internet Explorer. This mode can be activated by appending the parameter -k to the IE shortcut. For more details see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154780. In this mode the IE starts in full screen mode, but without the ability to access the navigation panes, toolbars and menus as it would be possible when switching to full screen view by pressing F11. To end such a session, the user is forced to use the Alt. + F4 hotkey and all navigation in IE has to be done through hotkeys too. Not the solution we wanted for standard users

The next approach were Microsoft Group policies, but they too had too many constraints and issues. One issue here was, that there is no way, to hide the standard toolbars through group policies. It would have been therefore inevitable to manipulate the HKCU branch of the users registry at logon. This is a subject, where the otherwise “overloaded” IE policies are not detailed enough

The solution came through a VBS object. Internet Explorer can be addresses and controlled through VBS. This gave me the possibility to adjust the user interface of the IE and to hide all toolbars, navigation panes and menues, without disabling basic functionality. The following code starts IE with a predefined URL and makes it much more difficult for users to break out of the predefined environment

DIM IE
Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
IE.Navigate "http://this.is.the.url.to.be.shown"
IE.Visible=True
IE.Toolbar=no
IE.Menubar=no
IE.Statusbar=no
IE.Width=750
IE.Height=600
IE.Resizable=yes
'IE.Top=5
'IE.Left=5

The entry IE.Navigate stands for the target URL. Take care that the whole URL is surrounded by double quotes. Optional parameters are for the windows size (IE.Width/IE.Height) and the windows position on the users desktop (IE.Top/IE.Left).

This script works perfect under Windows XP and 2003 Server. With Vista and 2008 Server administrative privileges are required!

Regards
Ecki

A few days ago, Citrix released the hot fix AG2000_v457 Rev. A. This release fixes a security issue found in all 4.5 releases of the Access Gateway. Fixes for Access Gateway 4.5.5, 4.5.6 and 4.5.7 are available for download.

Especially if you use the SSL VPN feature of the Access Gateway, it is recommended to install this fix as soon as possible.

The download and readme for CAG 4.5.7 Rev. A can be found here: CTX117123, Hot fix AG2000_v457 Rev. A

Regards
Ecki