Citrix Online Plug-in 12.3 - the Last Good Client?!

In April Citrix released, with very little fanfare, a very interesting version of the Online Plug-in (previously known as the PN Agent) – version 12.3, downloadable from here:

http://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=2323596&productId=163057

As well as the main client (which includes Agent and Web clients), there is the usual web client download and also a metadata file, so you can put the client on a Merchandising Server if that’s how you roll it out.

First off, I’ll say this is a great client.  Everyone who wants to retain the use of the blue Agent icon and is using an earlier client should consider it.  v12.0 was buggy as hell but had some decent new features – v12.1 fixed a lot of those bugs (but still had some, especially with IE9).  v12.3 finally gives us a fully working v12.x client, fixing 86 previous bugs!  This is a list of issues resolved:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133066/

The reason I am surprised by this client is that it is refreshingly short on new features or a new look and feel.  I’ve never warmed to the Receiver client’s interface and have resisted using the Merchandising Server since it enforced the loss of the Agent icon in the system tray.  Basically, this client is unusual because it doesn’t follow Citrix’s habit of forcing users to change what they use and how they work, but just fixes bugs.  It doesn’t even have a new name!  More of this please Citrix.  I have already fixed a couple of persistent issues by installing v12.3 on users PCs, especially the annoying “pressing ‘L’ in Citrix sometimes locks the Citrix session” bug. 

What’s odd is this means they have released the v12.3 client after v13.  Crazy.

XenApp 6 – Hotfix 068 fixes UI and server capacity issues

Citrix released Hotfix XA600W2K8R2X64068 last week – available here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX129741

This interestingly includes several previous hotfixes, including the quite recent public hotfix 056, which improved the stability XenApp 6.0 considerably, especially when combined with Windows 2008 R2 SP1.  This fix therefore now addresses 13 separate issues.

Most interesting in the list of new fixes for me are those relating to screen flickering, windows maximising over the taskbar and poor server performance over about 70 connections:

• Dock bars of published applications might overlap and obscure the local Windows Taskbar. This is the server-side component of the fix. To resolve the issue in its entirety, you must also install a client-side hotfix that contains Fix #206851.
  [From XA600W2K8R2X64068][#210857]

• Certain applications can perform slowly when run in seamless mode.
  [From XA600W2K8R2X64068][#257490]

• The CPU consumption of the winlogon.exe process can be higher than usual and cause new connection attempts to fail once a server hosts 70 connections or more. Eventually, servers can experience a fatal exception and need to be restarted.
  [From XA600W2K8R2X64068][#LA0032]

These issues have been seen on and off since we starting to run large number of user sessions on XenApp 6 servers.  Anecdotally, the issue of the Start Menu being obscured by Citrix sessions is quite widespread (though obviously more of an annoyance than anything).  We know that sessions can flicker when being shadowed using Remote Assistance or SCCM if the client version is older than v12.1 – hopefully this is also fixed now. The last one, servers behaving badly with over about 70 connections, is also just what we have seen, with far less user density (number of user sessions on each server) possible than we expected to be the case from benchmarking. We’ll allow more sessions now and see whether the servers behave better.

Incidentally, the “client-side hotfix that contains Fix #206851” mentioned in some of the issues fixed was included in the Citrix Online Plug-In v11.2 and is presumably in later releases as well.

Is the Citrix Online Plug-in being discontinued?

I’m currently having great fun playing with the Tech Preview of XenApp 6.5, which should hopefully be finished later this year.  There’s lots of interesting stuff in it, including new versions of every major server and client component of the XenApp suite and some great changes to the core functionality.

But where is the PN Agent?

Its been called the Citrix Online Plug-in for a while now, but I still call it the Agent.  Its great.  It can make shortcuts on your desktop or Start Menu, plus you can launch apps straight from your System Tray, down there by the clock.  You can use the same icon to logon as different users, change your authentication and session options, launch Connection Center, refresh your apps, or close Citrix down.  I love it.  I’m currently busy replacing all my 12.0 installations (which is full of bugs) with 12.1, which has been out a suspiciously long time with no major updates.

To be fair some people choose to click through the Start Menu rather than launch from the system tray, but without being unfair they are generally the people who don’t use computers much.  The expert users figured out ages ago that the “little blue icon” was two mouse clicks less and have no interest in using the Start Menu.

So where the heck is the Online Plug-in on the XenApp 6.5 DVD?  Does the lack of a v13 agent-style Online Plug-in mean its been replaced by the Receiver?

We’ve investigated the Receiver already and discounted it.  We even built a Merchandising Server 2.1 box which we never used as its only any use for the Receiver.  The Receiver takes away that lovely launching apps from the System Tray functionality and does its best to hide the Connection Center.  Considering we only just persuaded lots of out users to move from the aged Program Neighborhood to the Online Plug-in (which they now love) we’ll be really popular if we tell users that they had forget everything and instead stagger through the Start Menu to find their applications.

The most annoying thing (apart from a lack of official word from Citrix to actually help us plan) is that some functionality in XenApp 6.5 (such as pre-launching client connections to speed up logons) will only work in v13 of the client – which looks like its going to be Receiver only.  I am hoping this is not the case. 

Citrix, are you reading this?  Can we have some information?  Anyway, from this forum I’m not the only one unimpressed by the Receiver’s deliberately reduced functionality:

http://forums.citrix.com/message.jspa?messageID=1455633

Citrix Online Plug-in v12.1.44.1 brings IE9 support

Citrix have released a minor upgrade for their now pretty aged v12.1 of the Citrix Online Plug-in, which has been the current version of the client since November 2010.  This is to fix issues which some users had in launching applications after they upgraded to Internet Explorer 9.

IE9 is a little annoying at the best of times with Citrix’s Web Interface as it now often asks you to download and open an ICA file instead of just launching your application, but some users have reported that they don’t even get the option to open the ICA file with the old version, v12.1.0.30, due to a sharing violation. The problem was certainly not seen by everyone – I have been using IE9 with more than one Web Interface site for over a month without issue.  Users on the same sites and same browser and OS versions reported issues to me.

The new client has no other fixes listed than support for IE9 (which can still display the ICA download popup message – but it actually works now) so a major rollout of this client would probably be unnecessary.  Citrix even state on the notes for this release “Any known issues in Version 12.1 of the product, except for the specific issues resolved in this private online plug-in, still apply.”  Those known issues can be seen here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126965

Oddly, the old broken 12.1.0.30 client is still the main plug-in to download – you need to logon to MyCitrix to download the working version. 

Full details here:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126653

Shadowing in XenApp 6

The ability of an administrator or helpdesk to shadow their users is about as basic as it gets – a system like XenApp used to distribute applications remotely is unlikely to be serving a group of people in one room.  Yet bizarrely this feature, hardly recent addition to Citrix’s offering, has had quite profound problems in XenApp 6.

Broadly, there are a couple of issues.  The first is the Citrix client – versions 11.2 and 12.0 of the online plug-in had serious problems regarding shadowing which have only just been fixed in v12.1, which I am now recommending for anyone who might shadow a user.  The second is the heady technology that is having two monitors.  Basically, it would appear shadowing was only ever tested on machines with a single monitor – either that or Citrix released XenApp 6 knowing it had a major broken feature.

In my initial test environment when I started evaluating XenApp 6 I was using the v11.2 client on a pair of PCs with two monitors each so you can understand my initial estimate was the shadowing was in fact completely impossible.

The Client bug

The v11.2 and v12.0 online plug-ins do appear to support shadowing – mostly.  But when it connects it often only displays part of the user’s screen, with the image clipped at the sides and no way of scrolling, and sometimes it just closes immediately with an Error 120 messagebox.  This was not limited to XenApp 6, I had it on an old Presentation Server 4.0 farm. Apparently there was a workaround to publish the admin console as a non-seamless application, though the v11.0 client usually worked and the new 12.1 client does too. 

Basically, upgrade the helpdesk users to 12.1 and the clipping issue should go away.

The Dual Monitors bug

Ah, the biggie.  Basically, if the user being shadowed OR the user doing the shadowing has more than one monitor, you cannot shadow their seamless applications.  Pretty basic, really. 

Shadowing from a PC with one monitor to one with two gives the useful error “Error 7044 – The request to control another session remotely was denied”:

This sounds like an access issue, but it isn’t.  Its been denied because its not possible.  If you shadow from a PC with two monitors to one with a single monitor you get the real error - “Error 120 – this function is not supported on this system”.  Because it isn’t.

 

I’ve raised this with Citrix – they say its a Microsoft issue with shadowing on 2008 R2.  I build a Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services server hosting seamless applications through a web interface and it does indeed do exactly the same thing – sessions started on a PC with two monitors cannot be Remotely Controlled – you get told “Access is denied”.

Nice. So I raise it with Microsoft Support who say this is “by design”, not a bug.  Though it might be “redesigned” in the future.  Its actually easy to fix on RDS:

• On each RDS server, open “Remote Desktop Session Host Configuration”
• Right click RDP-Tcp, select Properties
• Select Client Settings
• Change the maximum number of monitors to 1. 

Not much good if you specifically want a two monitor Terminal Services session, but it will work for seamless apps.  Anyway, the same fix does nothing for XenApp I’m afraid.

Enough of this nonsense.  These workarounds suggest themselves for XenApp 6 which will get shadowing possible in most cases:

1. Make sure your admin people have the v12.1 online plug-in
   
2. Publish your XenApp management tools as a Desktop, or even better as a non-seamless application.  This will get around problems caused by your helpdesk and admin staff having two monitors.  You can see instructions on how to force a single published application to be “windowed” rather than seamless here: http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=265084&tstart=0.  But basically you edit the conf\default.ica file in each site on your web interface box to include some extra lines, starting with the name of the published app in square brackets, such as:
   
   [XenApp Console]
   TWIMode=Off
   ScreenPercent=85
   
3. If a dual monitor user calls up and asks to be shadowed, tell them to close their Citrix applications, disable all but one monitor and launch them again!  Just kidding, though that would work…
   
4. Ask said user to launch a published desktop which you have configured to be of a specific size – say 1024x768 or 90%.  If this has a Citrix client in it, they can launch apps there and you will be able to shadow the desktop and see its contents.
   
5. Alternatively, get them to temporarily change their client to open all apps in a specific window size rather than seamless.  So, if they use the online plug-in, right click its icon, select Options, Session Options and select a Window Size:
   
   …or if they use the Web Interface, get them to go to Preferences, Session Settings and select the Window Size there instead:
   
   

The next session they start you should be able to shadow. 

This is, of course, all a bit rubbish.  Hopefully it will get fixed soon, whether its a Citrix or Microsoft fix.

UPDATE 20/05/2011

Thanks for the comments below – I had meant to update this entry anyway.  We did make some progress on this, though it wasn’t great.  We found that indeed Remote Assistance works fine, so have been using it on clients with two monitors.  We also found that the v12.0 client was rubbish for this as well (the XenApp sessions work initially when shadowed but then start flashing dramatically – this is fixed with a v12.1 upgrade).  At least the users could be shadowed, at least the ones on the network could.  Not much use for someone on a remote PC not on our LAN though.

The comment below about using Remote Assistance to the server session is interesting though.  I’m off to experiment now…

Citrix Online and Offline plug-ins updated

Citrix have been quietly updating things again over the last couple of months – this mainly appears to be an exercise in bug fixing from the original XenApp 6 release!

Citrix Online Plug-in 12.1

I still call it the “Citrix Agent” y’know.

Anyway, v12.1 has finally been released and can be downloaded from here:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126965

It boasts a staggering 72 fixes to the previous versions which has got to make it an important release.  The most important fix from my point of view is the end of the bug introduced in at least v11.2 which caused clipping to occur when shadowing users on apparently any version of Citrix farm.  Previously I have been downgrading helpdesk users to v11.0 which usually fixed it, it is nice to have that problem removed.

New features of the client include

• ICA file signing. Apparently our security is increased by this change.
• The client end of the new XenApp Printing Optimization Pack.  There is a corresponding update for the XenApp 6 servers as well – this should improve printing for clients using v12.1 connecting to servers with the hotfix XA600W2K8R2X64010 installed.  Personally I am about to start testing to determine whether its worth updating ALL our servers and clients to get this or just let it creep in.
• A new decoder for HDX 3D Pro Graphics, which apparently is something for XenDesktop - this explains why I have never heard of it before.

I think the 72 bug fixes are probably the big win here!

Citrix Offline Plug-in 6.0.1

And I still call this the “Streaming Client”…

Whatever it is called, it was updated last month and can be downloaded from here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX125480

The good news for those with lots of application streams is that there is no new Streaming Profiler, version 6.0 is still current, so we should not have to recreate or update everything.  Again.

Anyway, for an upgrade of one minor point version – 6.0.0 to 6.0.1 – it has a LOT of stuff in the Issues Fixed list – 45 at the moment, and I am sure this has gone up as well since they released it.  Worrying issues this release fixes include scenarios where the XenApp servers could experience a blue screen of death crash (nice!) and a really annoying bug in streaming Microsoft Office where fonts fail to load.  I’m fairly sure I spent some time trying to fix this before it became one of the many reasons I wrote off streaming Office 2010 to servers in this release and went Hosted instead.

There is still stuff in the Known Issues for the Offline plug-in, including incompatibility with UPM v3.1.0.86 (just upgrade to 3.2…) and an odd couple of issues if you uninstall the client, the fix for one of them being to run a Repair on XenApp itself. 

So anyway, both client upgrades look like being a really good idea, fixing a phenomenal 117 issues between them.

Checking HDX MediaStream for Flash on XenApp is working

HDX MediaStream for Flash on XenApp is great.  It makes Flash content render really fast, saves CPU time on your sever and has a cool name. 

There are a few gotchas that can trip it up though, and if all its conditions are not satisfied it will fairly silently not work and render Flash on the server instead, causing poorer user experience and server slow down.  This guide should include all the pre-requisites to it working: http://zenapp.blogspot.com/2010/09/hdx-mediastream-for-flash-on-xenapp-6.html

There are a few ways of checking it is working in a XenApp published Internet Explorer window.

CPU Activity

Simple one – look at Task Manager on your client and server PCs when intensive Flash content is playing – one will probably have high usage against your user and that should be the client if HDX is working.

Task Manager

Still in Task Manager, while you are looking at Flash content, look for PseudoContainer.exe both running and probably using CPU time.  If PseudoContainer.exe is not running and you have Flash content being delivered by a XenApp server, its not using HDX.

Look for the Cyan

The HDX client uses Cyan as a background colour when its working.  Go to a flash site and resize the window by dragging its side out.  You should see a momentary flash of a light blue colour at the side as you do, like below:

Use the HDX Experience Monitor for XenApp

This is the last word in telling whether HDX is active and working.  Download this tool:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126491

Note this needs the Citrix Receiver to work, so if you don’t have a Merchandising Server, this is a good time to build one!

Install on the XenApp Server you are hosting Internet Explorer from – install the x86 version if you are deploying the x86 version of IE as a Citrix Application. 

Make this available as a Hosted Application (configured to only run one copy per user):

And run it in the same session as Internet Explorer.  If it sits on a screen waiting for performance monitor counters, you may have installed the wrong version (the x64 edition did this on my server).  It also won’t work in an RDP session.

If you launch this first it should say under Adobe Flash that “Receiver is compatible” (if it is!) but that “Flash redirection is not active”.  Once you launch IE in the same session and view Flash content it should change to active.

If you click the Adobe Flash entry you should see more details about HDX on this connection.  In this case, everything is fine except the network latency, which is too high and will block HDX from working.  This threshold can be configured in the Policies section of the XenApp 6 management tools for the farm.

Finally, there should be a Diagnostics section at the bottom of the screen.  Click “Run HDX Flash System Verifier” to launch a very useful tool that will check all the pre-requisites on your client PC.  This takes several minutes to run so be patient – it should tell you why HDX is not working if it still mysteriously is not.

HDX MediaStream for Flash on XenApp 6

HDX MediaStream for Flash (let’s just call it HDX, okay?) is a very good recent feature of XenApp.  It crept into XenApp 5 in the second and third feature packs and is installed by default in XenApp 6.

And its quite cool – well, most of the time.  Essentially it offloads the processing of Flash content from the server to the client when using a Citrix distributed copy of Internet Explorer.  The result is that the playback on the client PC is noticeably better than without it in most cases.  It also hammers the CPU of the client PC instead of the CPU on the server so should improve the user experience for everyone else too and help get more users per server.

Despite being installed by default in modern clients and on XenApp 6 servers there are a few things that might trip it up.  If any of these occur the client will generally silently fall back on the standard way of processing Flash content on the server.

For HDX Flash processing to work all these must be true:

Server Side Requirements for HDX

• The components must be installed on the server.  They are in by default but can be removed.  If you need to re-install them, get them from the “HDX MediaStream for Flash\X64” folder on the XenApp 6 media. 
• HDX can be blocked by policy on the server.  To check this, open your XenApp 6 admin tools (the DSC in its current name!).  Click Policies and edit the computer policy that applies to your server – Unfiltered if you have configured no other ones.  Under ICA > Multimedia find the HDX MediaStream Multimedia Acceleration policy.  If unconfigured, this will be on.

• The Flash 10.1 client must be installed on the XenApp 6 server.  This is true even if you are streaming IE plug-ins I’m afraid – it needs to be installed “properly”.

Client Side Requirements for HDX

• The Flash 10.1 client needs to be installed on the Client PCs as well – all of them.  Without it, HDX will not do anything.
• Your Online plug-in version must be at least v11.2
• As well as the client being up to date, it needs to have been installed with the right switches to include the “Flash” element.  If you just installed with no defaults you should be fine, but if you installed with switches then you need to include the Flash switch.  The easiest way to find if your client should work is to look for the file “PseudoContainer.exe” in the Citrix client install directory.  This is C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client by default (in the x86 version on 64-bit clients).  If PseudoContainer.exe is not on your system HDX will not work.
• The client must confirm that HDX can execute.  See below for an alternative, but by default the user will get the following prompt when trying to access flash content for the first time in a session:

Turning on HDX by default on Client PCs

An alternative to that rather rubbish box (which is, to be fair, useful when testing to easily determine whether HDX is improving your user experience) is to use group policy on your client PCs.  On a PC which has the right client installed (so, it has a PseudoContainer.exe file), look for this file:

C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client\Configuration\en\HdxFlash-Client.adm

Import into the computer group policy for your desktop PCs using Group Policy Management.  Edit the policy settings at Computer configuration > Administrative Templates > Classic Administrative Templates > HDX MediaStream For Flash – Client

Change the top setting to be Enabled and “Always”

Installing Merchandising Server 2.0

Merchandising Server is a fairly recent addition to the XenApp suite and one which I have held off implementing a while, for a couple of reasons.  The first is that frankly, I have enough XenApp servers now thanks very much, and the second is that its use in life appears to be limited to supporting the Windows and Mac editions of the Citrix Receiver.

We have a big implementation of the Agent which works very nicely so I had no need for the Receiver, so no need for the Merchandising Server.

But then the newly released HDX Experience Monitor for XenApp only supports the Receiver and I need that, so here we go.

By the way, here’s the Citrix eDocs site for Merchandising Server:

http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/merchandising-20/merchandising-20.html

Downloading the Merchandising Server

The Merchandising Server is unusual in that it comes as a XenServer or VMware exported VM.  The VM is actually a 1GB CentOS 5 machine which comes all ready to configure, so the process can be over remarkably fast.  I started with little idea what I was doing at about 9am and had a working system before lunch, hopefully these notes will help someone get it done a bit faster. 

These download links will require a valid logon to My Citrix.

XenServer download:
https://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=2303447&productId=1689163

VMware download:
https://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=2303453&productId=1689163

The main server download is a “bz2” file – 7zip should be able to extract this for you, its about 4gb extracted. There is also a plug-ins ZIP file which is worth downloading, though not essential.

I’m assuming here that you have a XenServer machine – mine is a slightly old XenServer 5.5 server so all the instructions are for the XenServer edition, I doubt the VMware edition is much different.

Importing the VM into XenServer

Firstly, setup your XenServer machine and XenCenter client tools on your workstation, if you don’t have these.  Your XenServer host will need 1gb of spare memory and 20GB spare storage. 

Right click your XenServer in XenCenter, Import VM:

Browse to the extracted xva file and click Next

Click Next and Import to select the host and storage repository.  Select the networking – link it to your real network.  It won’t use DHCP, so until you give it an IP it won’t do anything.

Click the Logs tab in XenServer to import:

At this point I have had the unhelpful message “This file could not be imported”.  I downloaded the whole file again and extracted it with 7zip instead of WinRAR, then I imported it again using locally installed XenCenter tools and a Console session, rather than XenApp streamed tools in an RDP session.  I don’t know which of these steps fixed it, but it imported fine the second time. 

A successful import should take about 10 minutes.

Once the server is imported it should start automatically by default.

Select your Server in XenCenter and click the Console tab to view its setup functions

Configuring the Merchandising Server’s Network Configuration

You will need to know the Hostname you want to use for the server, and IP addresses for the server, its netmask, DNS server IPs and the gateway IP to get the server working.  You should now see the following screen in your Console window:

Click 1 and enter a hostname and domain, then follow the menu through to steps 2-5 to complete the rest of the networking.  When you’re done, press 9 to save the changes:

Type yes to confirm, then enter a new root password.  The system will reboot and return to the menu

To finish this section, update the XenServer tools while you have chance.  Click the DVD Drive drop down menu and select xs-tools.iso.  In the rebooted server’s Console window, select 8 for Diagnostics.  You will now see these options:

Select 3 and press y to start the upgrade – this will cause one last server reboot.  In the Search tab of your XenServer’s host you should now see CPU and memory usage for the new guest OS.

You are done with XenCenter now and can close it.  The rest of the config is in the web interface.

Configuring the Merchandising Server

Before you can use the web interface, you may need to configure the DNS record to point to the IP that you have the server.  Pick something friendly as the DNS name as this could be something you’ll expect users to remember.  Mine is called “xenmerchant”

You will get a certificate error as it starts with a self signed certificate with less than a month left to run:

After accepting the certificate you get put into the default download page.  You don’t want this, so remove the download part of the URL – you want http://servername/appliance

You should now get this:

Username: root

Password: C1trix321

Once logged in click Change Root Password first – enter a decent password.

Working up the menu, click Configure AD

Fill this in, using a service account on your Active Directory that has a non-expiring password.  This should be a non admin user and only needs to be a member of Domain Users.  These are some example settings – obviously, change your source name to a domain controller, the Bind DN and Bind Password to your non admin user and Base DN to the Distinguished Name of your domain. 

 

Click Save and Sync.  The Sync will take a few minutes and you might need to wait for it to complete.

Click Permissions and enter your administrators name (your name?), then click Search.  Select yourself and click Edit.  Give yourself Administrator privilege and Click Save.  Set up any other admins you need.

Click Log off and Log in again with your domain username and password.  Your username should be in the form DOMAIN\username.

You finally see all the options and it should look like this:

Adding plug-ins

Merchandising Server appears to be basically a mechanism to get a real Citrix client to your users, and so it doesn’t do much without any plug-ins.  You can download clients directly from the Citrix site (although of course you can only really get the latest client from the Citrix site itself).  If you do this, remember to get the metadata file too.

Once you have the XML and executable file for the plug-in, click Upload in the plug-ins section and select them.  You should not normally have to change the metadata (though you can).  Once the upload is complete it will be present in Uploaded Plug-ins.  Don’t worry about the fact you have not configured the client yet – you will configure the essentials later.

Otherwise, just click Get New under the plug-ins section.  It should detect the available plug-ins and download them – assuming it understands your internet connection.  Personally, my proxy server foiled it.

Creating Rules and a Delivery

Now you have a plug-in uploaded to the server, its ready to be able to deploy it. 

Click Rules under Deliveries.

You might have lots of rules here – of course you might not care who downloads clients from your server and might just put in one very permissive rule.  In my case I only care that the PCs are domain computers, so I just selected Computer Domain Membership.  You might want to create rules for specific groups of users of operating systems, such as Mac users.

Click Save

Click Create / Edit to set up a Delivery.

Enter sensible values for this – have a think about the Completion Text, the users will see it!

Click the Plug-ins tab at the top and click Add to select the plug-in that you want to distribute.  Note this can be a delivery to Uninstall a client as well as Install it.

Click the Configuration tab – this will look different depending on what was in the Metadata file for the client you just selected.  In the case of my Online plug-in, it asks me to supply the Web Interface Server URL.  This field is required.

Click Rules and select one of the Rules you created earlier.  Note if you checked the Default Delivery button on the first page, this page doesn’t do anything.

Click the Schedule tab and then button and if you are happy to save it without scheduling it for a specific time.

Using the server

That’s the easy bit.  Go to the website from a PC and enter the DNS name you created earlier.

Agree to the Terms of Use and click Download to start the installation of the Receiver.  This will require Firefox 2 or IE7, .NET Framework 2 and local admin rights – at least for the install.  After installation the Receiver will be able to keep the clients up to take based on the rules and deliveries you specify.

Citrix Client v12.0 install fails with: Error 1606 Could not access network location components.

I’ve had this error a few times now with a big PC rollout I’ve been doing of v12.0 client (that’s why I’ve not posted anything for ages!  5000 machines down, 2000 to go…) and thought it might be useful to share.   A scripted install of the client crashes out with the useless error “Could not access network location components”, event ID 11606.

Each time this has been because someone has previously installed Firefox and then uninstalled it (tsk – non-Enterprise ready software!  And users with local admin rights, always a dangerous combination).

To solve, check whether Firefox is installed (probably not – remove it if so) and blow away this registry key that it fails to tidy up:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla

The install should now sail through just fine.

I’m sure there are other things that could cause this error of course, but I’ve had it a few times now and its been a badly removed Firefox installation every time.

Citrix Client v12.0 – Windows Installer requirements

The XenApp Online plug-in v11.2 and v12.0 have a minimum requirement that I’ve just run into – the version of the Windows Installer has to be at least v3.0 or the install will fail with this lovely error message that “The version of the Windows Installer on this computer does not meet the minimum installation requirements”.

In case you don’t know your Windows Installer versions (shame on you!) click here or just remember that the default Windows Installer of Windows XP SP2 and later is okay:

Windows Installer version	Released with OS\Service Pack	Compatible with Citrix Client v11.2+
1.1	Windows 2000	No
2.0	Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP	No
3.0	Windows XP SP2	Yes
3.1	Windows XP SP3, Windows 2003 SP1	Yes
4.0	Windows Vista, Windows 2008	Yes
4.5	Windows Vista SP2, Windows 2008 SP2	Yes
5.0	Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2	Yes

The fastest way to test which version of the Windows Installer you have will be to click Start > Run and type msiexec.  You get a popup with the version number, like this from a Windows XP Professional SP1 machine:

You can also look at the File Version of the file c:\windows\system32\msiexec.exe – useful if you use SMS/SCCM.

Windows XP SP1 and RTM are probably your main concern – they should be upgraded to Windows Installer v3.1 (v4.5 is available too but requires Windows XP SP2) before you try to install the XenApp v11.2 or v12.0 clients.  The install requires a reboot before you can use it.

Incidentally, v11.0 did not have this requirement and will install with at least v2.0 of the Windows Installer.

Windows 7 – Always show the Citrix offline plug-in (agent) icon in taskbar’s System Tray

Windows 7 has a change to the default functionality of the System Tray in that icons created there do not display by default.  Instead, users have to click a strange up arrow:

You then get that white box appear and can click on your icons.  In this case the icons include that of the old PN Agent, the Offline Plug-in.  This extra mouse click is annoying, but the fact that less clued-up users won’t even know they can launch their Citrix apps from down there is an active problem.

It can be fixed per user by clicking Customise, finding Citrix XenApp in the list and changing the drop-down to “Show icon and notification”.

But that’s a bit rubbish since it can’t be set (that I know of…) by a script and is per user.  Nonetheless, that’s what I do on my PC.

To fix it for everyone your only option is to create a registry key which will force all System Tray icons to be visible on the Taskbar.  To do this, Click Start > Run (or press Win-r) and type regedit.

Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Right click Explorer, New > DWORD value called EnableAutoTray.  Leave its value as 0 (zero).  Log off and log back on and regardless of what you have previously set, all icons are now visible – including the Citrix agent.  Setting it to 1 will set it back to default for everyone, and removing the key lets you define it per user by putting it in HKCU.

Here’s that registry key again:

Citric online plug-in – changing the Server URL breaks shortcuts

I’ve had a strange bug reported by one of my users when I changed the Server URL her PN Agent (sorry, online plug-in!) used to connect to the farm.  She had dragged lots of shortcuts from her Start Menu to her desktop for Word, Excel, etc and now none of them worked – they came up with “The requested resource has been removed from the server”.

Which it hadn’t.

Anyway, the new and old Server URL went to the same Web Interface server and connected to the same farms, just with different options – after looking a bit closer though the capitalisation I’d given the farm names in “Server Farms” under the different Web Services sites were slightly different – same letters, just different capitals.  I made them the same and the old shortcuts all started working again.  I then went through every Web Interface site and made sure they were all the same! 

Yet another picky “feature” of Citrix…

Citrix Web Client 12.0 - “A remote application is trying to access files on your computer”…

We’ve had some fun with the new v12.0 XenApp Client – by default each user on web interface sites is asked when they launch applications that try to use the local drives.  The message below pops up, which is nicely redesigned since the previous versions.

If the user clicks Yes, access to resources such as local drive mappings is then enabled (read only if the checkbox was clicked).  Otherwise, you can get errors such as “The folder ‘c:\*.*’ isn’t accessible”.

The solution to this is a registry fix that can be rolled out via a login script, SMS, etc.  The registry file can be downloaded from here (though I have not followed their instructions exactly… http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124871

Basically, download the reg file from this site and look for this line:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA Client\Client Selective Trust\oidIntranetRegionIcaAuthorizationDecision\FileSecurityPermission]
"stereotype"="DbScalar"
@="3"

Change the 3 (prompt) to a 2 (full access)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA Client\Client Selective Trust\oidIntranetRegionIcaAuthorizationDecision\FileSecurityPermission]
"stereotype"="DbScalar"
@="2"

And apply the reg file.  On command line this would be:

reg import c:\ssonregupx86.reg

 

Solution for v11.2 client

[Apologies for those who may have been misled by this article in the past – I originally  posted this as a solution for the v12.0 client – actually v12.0 pays no attention to the webica.ini file.  This works fine on v11.2 though, which exhibits the same problem, albeit with different error messages]

If you want to avoid errors such as this, decide whether you want applications to have access to local drives (different for everyone I’m sure, but you probably do), create a text file called “webica.ini” at these locations automatically at logon:

Windows Vista and 7:  C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\ICAClient

Window XP and 2000: C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\ICAClient

The file contents for allow access and never ask is:

[Access]
GlobalSecurityAccess=405

Citrix Web Client 11.2 - “A remote application is trying to access files on your computer”…

We’ve had some fun with the v11.2 XenApp Client – by default each user on web interface sites is asked when they launch applications that try to use the local drives.  The message below pops up, which is nicely redesigned since the previous versions.

If the user clicks Yes, access to resources such as local drive mappings is then enabled (read only if the checkbox was clicked).  Otherwise, you can get errors such as “The folder ‘c:\*.*’ isn’t accessible”.

If you want to avoid errors such as this, decide whether you want applications to have access to local drives (different for everyone I’m sure, but you probably do), create a text file called “webica.ini” at these locations automatically at logon:

Windows Vista and 7:  C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\ICAClient

Window XP and 2000: C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\ICAClient

The file contents for allow access and never ask is:

[Access]
GlobalSecurityAccess=405

XenApp client 12.0 released

Just as I was set up for a big deployment of v11.2, they go and release v12.  Typical.  v12.0 of the Online Plug-in is the new version of Web Interface client and the old PN Agent.  The Program Neighborhood is long gone of course.

At first glance it appears to be basically exactly the same as v11.2 with some bug fixes so I am not sure the major edition change was entirely necessary, but I suppose we should be grateful that its not been renamed!  Suspiciously available on the same day as new versions of XenApp, the Streaming Client and Profiler and various other things, I can’t help but wonder whether the version change was decided on by Marketing.

Anyway, the client is available from here:

Online Plug-in - Version 12.0

And here are its list of issues fixed…

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124172

SideBySide errors - Citrix XenApp client v11.2 requires Visual C++ Redistributable?

When upgrading Windows XP machines to v11.2 of the client I’ve noticed lots of SideBySide (so, Visual C++) errors in their system event log.  The odd thing is, everything appears to work fine, applications launch okay but cause these errors each time they do. 

This issue is mentioned in the release notes of the v10.2 client and appears to still be the case with v11.2.  This was seen connecting to a MPS 4.0 farm, I assume its not about the farm version though.

I can’t find what the actual problems caused by these errors might be, though the Citrix forums mention printing issues.

Anyway, installation of the Visual C++ Redistributable SP1 (x86 and x64) fixed the issue and the errors stopped.  I’ve added this as a pre-requisite to the script that rolls out Citrix 11.2 clients to PCs now.

These are the errors it caused…

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    SideBySide
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    59
Description:
Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client\MFC80.DLL. Reference error message: The operation completed successfully.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    SideBySide
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    58
Description:
Syntax error in manifest or policy file "C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client\Microsoft.VC80.MFCLOC.MANIFEST" on line 5.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    SideBySide
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    34
Description:
Component identity found in manifest does not match the identity of the component requested

Quick Launch and ICA file creator for XenApp

The QuickLaunch bar has for some time been the main use I’ve had for the old Program Neighborhood and the only reason I didn’t want to lose it by updating to client v11.2, so this free tool released late in 2009 from Citrix is an essential part of replacing the old client…

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX122536

Not only does the QuickLaunch tool replicate the functionality of the Quick Launch bar of the old PN client, it also acts as an ICA file creator.  Note the ICA files it makes do not have usernames and passwords by default, so you can edit them to include the necessary fields – for example (passing the password in plain text!)…

[WFClient]
Version=2
TcpBrowserAddress=servername.domainname.local
[ApplicationServers]
Word 2007=192.168.1.1
[Word 2007]
Address=Word 2007
TransportDriver=TCP/IP
InitialProgram=#Word 2007
WinStationDriver=ICA 3.0
Username=username
Domain=DOMAINNAME
ClearPassword=password
DesiredColor=8
DesiredHRES=1024
DesiredVRES=768
AutoLogonAllowed=On