Publishing Chrome on XenApp 6.x (or not)

When I was asked to get Chrome on Citrix, I thought this was going to be easy.  Really, its a web browser.  What could go wrong? 

Lots.

First problem, Chrome installs into your local AppData folder by default.  In the past people came up with some wacky solutions to this but there is now an MSI download from Google which installs into c:\Program Files (x86)\…

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/

Great, problems solved – a Chrome v21 browser which is not installed “per user”.  I I know Google release a new major version every other week or so, so I would rather stream it than install it to install this to my Citrix servers.  Installing it either way  was bizarrely complex as the MSI hangs forever during installation with the message “Please wait while the application is preparing for the first use”.

On a Citrix server this sometimes means there is another msiexec process running at the same time in another session, but not in this case.  Anyway, I found a solution on Lukas Beeler’s blog and resolved my issue by importing some registry settings – save these lines as a .reg file and they should allow the installation to work:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services\TSAppSrv]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services\TSAppSrv\TSMSI]
"Enable"=dword:00000000

Great!  All problems resolved I publish two icons for Chrome on XenApp – one Streamed, one Hosted.  Neither work!  They just sit there not rendering any pages.

You can’t even get into settings.  Its useless.  And from what I read, this is basically a known issue!  This is the official Citrix article on this problem, though I sadly don’t get the really professional “aw, snap” message:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX132057/

This is one of the many Google Forums articles with this problem I've found:

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84045

And I try it in a published desktop, which works fine – but I specifically want it as a seamless application.  So I follow the instructions in the Citrix article and add “-no-sandbox” to the command line parameters of the application and suddenly everything works – except I now get a dirty big error telling me I have made the browser less secure – which I have.  In their words, “Stability and security will suffer”, though I would argue its more stable now!

And the solution?  No idea, and if anyone has a solution, do let me know.  The solution is that you publish it in a Desktop or live with using “no sandbox mode”, with the security problems and error.  I’ve read it might work if you use app-v, though others say not. 

This is all not endearing me to Chrome though, especially since this appears to have been an issue since at least v12.

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.