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The Magic of CSS–Customizing Citrix Web Interface

2012-05-22T09:32:00.000-04:00

Another great Tutorial post from Sam Jacobs! Class is in session…

A poster in the Web Interface forum (http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1627343#1627343) asked how to make the following modifications to the Web Interface logon page:

Change the page background color,
Expand the logon window and change its background color,
Enlarge and center the Logon Button,
Remove the page footer and extra whitespace at the bottom of the page, and
Adding scrolling horizontal text (a “marquee”) above the logon box.

As always, we start with a default WI site:

Unless otherwise specified, all of the files we will be modifying are in the following directory:
..\XenApp\app_data\include

The first modification is to change the page background color.
Open fullStyle.inc with your favorite text editor, and make the following changes (click on each image to enlarge):

Our logon screen now looks as follows:

Let’s move on to the next two modifications – expanding the logon window, changing its background color, and enlarging and centering the logon button. We’ll need to modify two CSS files.

Open loginStyle.inc, and make the following changes:

Re-open fullStyle.inc, and make the following changes:

Our page now looks as follows:

Now, let’s remove the page footer and extra whitespace at the bottom of the page. While we’re at it, let’s change the Citrix logo to our own. We’ll need to first make some more modifications to fullStyle.inc:

Then, to change the logo, you’ll need to copy your logo to the /media directory, and we’ll need to make a modification to layout.ascx:

This brings our screen to:

If you are changing the background color, make sure that you use a transparent .gif (or .png) … otherwise, you will end up with something that looks like this:

Our final modification is to add a scrolling text area (marquee) above the logon box with, for example, system status information. First, add a new CSS tag to loginStyle.inc:

We will also need a change to layout.ascx to add the marquee:

Our final result:

Thanks Sam!

DISCLAIMER: Make sure that you make backup copies of any modified source files. Do NOT perform these modifications on a production site currently in use. These modifications are for Web Interface version 5.4 only.

How to Retrieve the Username from a PNAgent Site

2012-05-16T12:05:00.001-04:00

New from Sam Jacobs!

Today, a user on the Citrix Web Interface forum asked how one goes about retrieving a user’s name. As this is something a Web Interface developer does on a daily basis, I was able to respond quite quickly with the answer. His next question was whether the username could be retrieved from a PNAgent site, as he wanted to perform some actions based on the logged in user.

That was another matter altogether, as the Authentication object which exists for a Web Interface site, does not exist for a PNAgent site. At the time I suggested that he use a cookie from the Netscaler logon screen to store the username (which I now realize would not have helped, since there isn’t any Netscaler logon screen for PNAgent). However, he was pretty insistent that there must be a way, and after giving it some more thought, I agreed with him.

So, after a few more hours of digging, I am happy to report that he was right, and it turns out to be quite simple to implement.

As with any development work, there is always more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, and the way I’ve done it is detailed below.

Make sure that you back up the original code before you begin. However, remember that all java modules in a directory will be compiled, so .java files need to either be backed up in a different directory, or be given a different extension.

Back up the file Enumeration.java in the directory \Inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\PNAgent\app_code\PagesJava\com\citrix\wi\pna.

At line #111 you should see:

AccessToken accessToken = enumRequest.getAccessToken(); SIDBasedToken sidToken = null; if (accessToken instanceof SIDBasedToken) { sidToken = (SIDBasedToken)accessToken; }

Add the bolded lines (Lines 2, 3 & 4) where indicated:

AccessToken accessToken = enumRequest.getAccessToken(); // save the userID in a session variable so we can use it anywhere getWebAbstraction().setSessionAttribute("PNAUser", accessToken.getShortUserName()); SIDBasedToken sidToken = null; if (accessToken instanceof SIDBasedToken) { sidToken = (SIDBasedToken)accessToken; }

This creates a session variable that can be used in any module of the site. For example, if you wished to perform some action for the user after applications have been enumerated, you can add the bolded line (Line 3) to the end of enum.aspx:

<% (new com.citrix.wi.pna.Enumeration(pnaContext, null)).perform(); string userID = Session["PNAUser"] + ""; // perform other actions based on userID ... %>

Thanks Sam!

Dropbox 2012 Quest! Get an additional 1GB of space.

2012-05-13T14:06:00.001-04:00

I like Dropbox. It’s super easy to use, supports all the client devices I need and I’ve found a ton of enhancements that really make it work the way I want it to within my workflow. For whatever reason, I haven’t ponied up the cash to get more space though. Instead, I have been taking advantage of almost every possible way that Dropbox allows users to get more free space. To the tune of 20GBs so far. Yesterday, they released another one. The Dropbox Quest challenge. They did this last year and are back again. This time offering up another Gigabyte of free space to users who complete the challenge. The initial challenge was completed in about 5 hours and since then, all the answers are all over the place making this a pretty easy way to up your account limit without much hassle.

To join the challenge (before they close it down), head to http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=1194.

If you are not up for the Challenge and just want the space, you can find the answer key here: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/dropboxquest2012 Have Fun!

AppSense <-> ThinApp issue. [Resolved]

2012-04-30T08:12:00.000-04:00

I ran into an interesting AppSense Environment Manager / VMware ThinApp issue at a client recently. While packaging apps, Robert Luisi and I ran into an issue were a ThinApp’d application would not launch. Double click and the splash screen would launch and then nothing. Check the task manager and you would see the processes in the background but they would be almost in a hung state. We also couldn’t kill the process or the process tree and would have to reboot the VM to clear up the condition.

Running a quick trace with Process Monitor, we would see locking issues on the cache files in the ThinApp directory on the client.

On a plain vanilla Windows 7 machine (the packaging machine), the package would work fine. We also tried on an XP machine without issue. The issue only came to light when run on a machine with the AppSense Client on it. Although all policies were disabled on the machine, JUST INSTALLING the AppSense EM agent was enough to create this issue. Interestingly enough, the application could be installed on that same machine without ThinApp’ing it and it would work fine.

After a quick call to AppSense tech support, the issue was resolved with a client side Registry entry.

Registry Key: HKLM\Software\AppSense\Environment Manager\
Value Name: LegacyAppInit

Value Type: REG_DWORD

Value Data: 1

There might be a KB article on this in AppSense’s knowledgebase but I have some issues with the way they publish their KB articles.

PSA : DNS Malware infections

2012-04-26T15:32:00.001-04:00

Just a quick PSA post from Marcos Velez.

As you may have heard by now, a fairly serious DNS-related malware infection took place last year and has been on the news recently. While the malware was stopped on November 8 2011, and a temporary solution put in place to help infected users, it is estimated that a sizable amount of the more than 4 million infected PCs is still affected and will lose Internet connectivity on July 9 2012, when the temporary fix will be taken offline. The malware was part of an elaborate advertising scam that would change user's DNS settings to point to a set of rogue servers that would direct users to websites that in turn resulted in "clicks" for advertisements. The rogue DNS servers were taken over by the FBI in November but, given the widespread reach of the malware, it was decided to keep them online to prevent a large amount of users from losing Internet functionality. The problem is that the servers are being taken offline in ten weeks and many people could lose the ability to resolve internet addresses when that happens.

To make sure you are not "infected", you can use the following link to check that your DNS settings are OK and not compromised: http://www.dns-ok.us/

Alternatively, if you want to read more about the malware, and the situation that has ensued, you can read about it here: http://www.dcwg.org/

Have a great day, and don't let your computer lose its Internet functionality!

Thanks Marcos!

VMware vExpert 2012

2012-04-23T08:05:00.000-04:00

The new 2012 vExpert list was released recently and I was fortunate enough to make the list again this year. For the past 4 years since the program’s inception, I have been lucky enough to be included with some very good company. This year’s list contains some really smart, passionate and dedicated people. About 300 in total. I think this number will likely increase since the program was recently opened up to customers who evangelize VMware and virtualization within their own organizations.

It’s really great to be recognized though. Blogging can be a lot of work and requires some real dedication in my opinion. Early on in the process of setting up a blog and sometimes later on, it can feel like you are just talking to yourself in an empty room. You have to stay motivated and committed to continue posting. Eventually, people will begin to read, respond and interact. It’s surprisingly great and very rewarding when you begin to see a community of your peers develop through the sharing and discussion of ideas and information. Of course, I’m proud to be an active part of that community.

Thanks for reading and supporting everyone on the list.

‘Printing’ to Evernote using Folder Imports

2012-04-19T15:34:00.001-04:00

I really love Evernote. I have been finding uses for it throughout my work processes and personal life. It’s a great application and service. There are a ton of ways to use it and I am always looking for more ways. Printing to PDF and direct importing to Evernote seemed like something I could use. Hitting print and having an ‘Evernote Printer’ would be the best solution but until that’s available, here is what I came up with.

Import Folders
Import folders is a pretty nifty feature of the Windows based Evernote client. You can set it up to scan folders and when it sees a new or updated file in the folder (and optionally subfolders), it will auto import it into a notebook with appropriate tags. You can then have Evernote delete or keep the source.

Basically, I created an EverNote Import folder and configured it in Evernote’s Folder Import feature to delete. Now I just print to PDF and save directly to this folder. Evernote sees it and imports the PDF and deletes the source. Works pretty good.

Happy Evernote’ing.

Multiple Versions of Word (Same Machine) via Aaron’s App tip!

2012-04-11T10:47:00.001-04:00

If you are not using ThinApp or some other Application isolation technique, here’s a great way to get multiple versions of Word running on the same XenApp or XenDesktop image from Aaron Silber.

Aaron was working on a new XenApp build for a client who requested to have Word 2003, 2007 and 2010 installed on the same server, to which he of course said, no problem! Well, they all installed ok, but he found out that Word 2003 and Word 2010 actually don’t behave too well together; incidentally 2007 had no issues with either of them.

In order to get this going you need to install them in ascending order, so that new files overwrite older ones. The issue is that once you are all done and launch Word 2003, it complains that there is an issue and you need to run a repair, running a repair causes the same issue with the Word 2010.

The answer? Create a registry entry in each of the Office version registry branches called NoReReg and set it to 1. This will stop Word from trying to be king of the hill and knock out the other versions.

Key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options

Value: NoReReg
Type: DWORD
Data: 1
Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2121447

Once this is done, voilà! Everyone gets along on the playground again!

Thanks Aaron!

Fake News of the day.

2012-04-01T10:10:00.000-04:00

Citrix and VMware institute tweet only support: In similar cost cutting moves, both Citrix and VMware customers running free hypervisors (XenServer or ESXi) will be forced to use Twitter as their sole means of support communication with the respective companies. Although customers will now be challenged to explain their issues with 140 characters or less, they can probably expect faster response times from engineers trolling the social media networks than they have had with traditional call centers.

Hewlett Packard, Dell and Toshiba all to debut Virtual Laptops: Riding the wave surrounding Virtual Desktops and VDI, three major hardware vendors are set to release individual versions of Virtual Laptops (vLVM). Compatible with all three of the current hypervisors, administrators will now have the option to create lightweight virtual laptops within their virtual infrastructures. These vLVMs will replace the bulky virtual machines of the past further reducing the virtual footprint on their virtual desks. While pricing has not been announced, Virtual Laptops promise infinite battery life (as long as the host hypervisor is plugged in) and will initially come in 65,366 different colors (in the form of Visio stencils and Management Console icons).

Microsoft buys the Internet: In spite of analyst reports that confirm Bing’s ever growing market share in the search engine wars, Microsoft has taken the extreme measure of purchasing the entire Internet for a lump sum cash payment. With an endless cash reserve in their war chest and now sole ownership of the internet, Microsoft lawyers have instructed Google to Cease and Desist all indexing of it’s property. Analysts predict Bing will become the dominant search engine of choice by the end of the year.

-Carlo

Quick Tip–The Registry.

2012-03-28T14:30:00.001-04:00

Trying to eek out every last drop of performance on your Windows server? Chopping things down from the registry is a great place to start. Aaron Silber has sent over a bunch and here’s another. Leveraging this on Citrix Servers could improve performance (certainly won’t hurt).

Disable random driver verification
The driver verifier at random intervals verifies drivers for debugging. Disabling this functionality might improve system performance. For many high-throughput systems, every CPU cycle counts. Disable random driver verification with the following registry entry:

DontVerifyRandomDrivers
Key:                                                HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Value:                                            DontVerifyRandomDrivers
Data Type:                                   REG_DWORD
Range:                                           0 – 1
Default value:                              0
Recommended value:                1
Value exists by default?            No, needs to be added.

This and others can be found here : Registry Settings that can be Modified to Improve Operating System Performance

How about some Hyper-V Eye Candy? v3.0 :)

2012-03-23T09:23:00.000-04:00

Happy Friday! Here is a full screen, full color Windows Server 8 Hyper-V component architecture poster!
There was also a XenServer poster and VMware CLI poster if you still have free wall space in the cube.

How to update firmware on a WYSE R90x

2012-03-21T08:26:00.000-04:00

So you are having some trouble upgrading your Firmware on your Wyse Device huh? These instructions might help.

Here’s the background information:
So you download the latest version of the Wyse USB imaging tool - v 1.15 as of this writing.
Ran the tool
Formatted an 8 gig thumb drive [more or less]
Pointed it to the .rsp file for the R90
Connected it to the Wyse terminal
Powered ON the Wyse terminal
Hit the P key a few times
Selected the thumb drive to boot to …

… and Nothing, Nada, Zip… it just hangs on a Black Dos screen with a flashing cursor. Blinking and laughing maniacally at you and your feeble attempts at following directions.

Go ahead and try this a couple more times. [Spoiler Alert: The result will not change!]

Fortunately Jeff Miller and his Google-Fu found the solution to your issues! After scouring the web, he found an interesting post that basically told him that even though the Wyse guide clearly states that Windows 7 is supported for the firmware tool, using a Windows XP machine instead will finally get you past the Black Screen of DOS. ;)

Read the whole thread here and check out the Wyse Guide here.

Great Job Jeff and thanks for sharing!

Teaming Broadcom NICs in Hyper-V

2012-03-19T08:53:00.000-04:00

In a past post, I have written about Hyper-V networking and how to configure. Since Hyper-V’s architecture allows individual vendors to leverage their own software for networking and storage, depending on hardware configurations, each Hyper-V installation will be different. Here are some specifics around Hyper-V networking using the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite software.

After installing the software from Broadcom, Launch the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite to begin creating a Networking Team.

Switch the Filter to TEAM VIEW and right click on Teams and choose Create Team.

In this example, I am creating a NIC team to support production traffic for the Virtual Machines.

For this particular setup, I chose Smart Load Balancing. LACP would have required port configuration on the switches and could have yielded better performance but I opted for the less complicated route for this post.

Add the available adapters to the team.

You can choose to keep all adapters active or create a standby member.

LiveLink is similar to beaconing in vSphere. It will periodically send a probe packet from one member NIC to another to verify that the link is in fact responding to requests. This can help minimize the downtime due to the spanning tree loop determination when failing over.

This screen is where you could have added VLAN tag support. it was not necessary in this case.

Commit the changes and the Virtual NIC Team will be created within Windows. I typically rename the member adapters in order to associate them with the Virtual Team NIC.

At this you can fire up the Hyper-V Manager and create your vSwitch pointing it to your NIC Team.

It would be great if it picked up the friendly name but for now, just match up the adapter description to ensure correct connectivity.

Why I’m still Jailbreaking my iPhone.

2012-03-16T09:14:00.000-04:00

I dig my iPhone. I REALLY love it actually. Much more than any other phone I’ve had in the past. I only LIKE the stock iPhone though. For me, Jailbreaking the iPhone is a necessity to get the iOS to exactly where I need it to be.

Some people incorrectly think that Jailbreaking is all about piracy. It can be but in my case, the biggest reason to Jailbreak the iPhone is extending features and unlocking customizations that I find sooo useful. Here are 2 examples of my must have Jailbreak hacks.

Folder Enhancer
Folder Enhancer is a great tweak to the iOS that allows Folders within Folders. I install a TON of applications and honestly don’t like scrolling from page to page to find something. Folder Enhancer allows me to consolidate everything down to my home page and organize everything within subfolders. It is very efficient and effective and I find it very surprising that this functionality hasn’t been folded into the standard iOS yet.

SBSettings
SBSettings is another tweak that really makes my iPhone complete. Combined with another tweak called Activator, I have it set up to allow me to double tap the status bar on top anywhere on the iPhone and get instant access to a screen of toggles controlling various features of the iPhone. I use it all the time to toggle WiFi on and off as I travel around. Sure, I could go to Settings, WiFi and do it there but this is super fast and useful.

Eventually, the best hacks and tweaks are absorbed into the standard iOS releases by Apple but this usually gives me first dibs on the features. I guess you could equate it to beta testing features. (complete with occasional crashes and bugs). Clearly, Jailbreaking is not for everyone but for those of us inclined to tinker with our gadgets, I still recommend it.

If you have any must have tweaks, drop them in the comments for everyone!

User Roaming feature with Web Interface

2012-03-14T08:27:00.000-04:00

Sam Jacobs came across a new Web Interface 5.4 feature with XenApp 6 that both he and I thought would be nice to share for those interested …

User Roaming is a feature that restricts user groups to enumerate applications only from specific farms.

So, for example, if Farm1 contains servers from NY, Farm2 contains servers from the UK, and Farm3 contains servers from HK, then adding the following to the WI config file:

Farm1Groups=<NY AD Group>
Farm2Groups=<UK AD Group>
Farm3Groups=<HK AD Group>

… would only enumerate applications for NY users from Farm1, for UK users from Farm2, and for HK users from Farm3.

This would also be useful for companies migrating users from one farm to another (usually when they upgrade from one XenApp version to another or possibly XenDesktop).

As users are transferred to the migrated AD group, they will automatically begin receiving the updated applications.

See: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/web-interface-impington/wi-configure-xd-user-roaming-gransden.html for additional details.

Thanks Sam!

Old News: VMware View client for the MAC.

2012-03-12T15:09:00.001-04:00

I know this post is about 3 months late but I’ve been asked about it recently a bunch of times so I figured I’d post up a quick note with the View Client for MAC Tech Preview link.

View Client for MAC OS X Tech Preview

It was released without much fan fare on December 15th 2011 but Gabe wrote up a great review of the client @
http://Gabesvirtualworld.com/vmware-view-client-with-pcoip-for-mac-os-x/

The biggest feature for users will be the ability to leverage the PCoIP protocol for their View 5 solutions across all end points.

Thanks @JTroyer & @LXmaier #vExperts

2012-03-09T10:06:00.000-05:00

Came home recently to a nice gift from VMware. Shiny new vExpert laptop bag with certificate and luggage tag.

This year at the VMware Partner Exchange, vExperts were privy to exclusive executive briefings, meetings and party/receptions. The vExpert program is now officially part of the VMware Partner Network which basically means more resources and probably a more official selection/application process. Historically, mainly blogger and speakers have been vExperts but for 2012 the application process will be opened up to customers as well who have greatly influenced VMware adoption on a large scale within their company. There is some specific criteria around this application process but it is a great way for VMware to recognize individuals who have evangelized the company and solutions within their own company. I’ve been honored to be a part of the vExpert Program since it’s inception and hope to continue as a member for years to come.

John Troyer and recently Alex Maier have been great stewards of the vExpert program and deserve a lot of credit for taking it to the next level in terms of recognition within VMware.

To sum it up: Thanks John and Alex for the great work and SWAG.

Updating a Standard image in Citrix Provisioning.

2012-03-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

Most of the Citrix Provisioning deployments I come across leverage 2 basic mage types. Standard and Private. Very high level, Private images are read write and are typically used in a 1 to 1 model between machine and image. Standard is a read only image that can be used by multiple machines simultaneously. Production deployments leverage standard images for large deployments of users. Since the vDisk is in read only mode, any change you make to the machines using the standard image will be lost upon reboot.

In order to update the Read Only vDisk, you will need to do the following:

On the Provisioning Server, locate the directory that has the standard image you would like to update and make a copy of it (VHD and PVP files). The LOK files are not necessary as they are LOCK files.

After creating the new vDisks, you will need to add them to the Provisioning Server Console Store.

Once added to the store, you can edit the FILE PROPERTIES and change from Standard to Private.

With the new vDisk now in the store, you can assign it to a VM, power it on and begin modifying the image.

After making the proper modifications to the vDisk, you should power down the VM and repeat the process of switching the vDisk back to Standard mode. Next step to to assign the new vDisk to all of your machines. Even if they are currently on, they will pick up the new vDisk image at the next reboot.

For HA environments, be sure to copy the new disks to all appropriate locations as well.

Some Basic Citrix XenDesktop\Provisioning Troubleshooting Steps

2012-03-02T13:51:00.001-05:00

Here are some pretty basic troubleshooting steps for your typical vanilla Citrix XenDesktop with Provisioning Server deployment. Nothing too groundbreaking here but good material to pass along to your Help Desk to hopefully eliminate some of the escalated calls. Although pretty basic, it is sometimes hard figuring out which consoles to look into to resolve connection issues. Unifying the consoles for the various Citrix products would go a long way to resolving this. Some of these basic steps are also applicable to VMware View as well.

If a user is having trouble getting into their VDI session:
On the Provisioning console, check to make sure the desktops are powered on. Most deployments usually have a tie-in to vCenter to allow XenDesktop to power up machines if the user decides to power them off. Some do not and since XD can also handle connections to physical machines, sometimes it is not be able to power on the required desktop for the user. It’s a good suggestion to set Active Directory policies to restrict a user’s ability to power down a VDI session.

If the machines are powered up, check the console to verify that the vDisk is not locked. This is specifically for Citrix Provisioning server machines when the vDisk is mistakenly left in private read/write mode and assigned to multiple VMs. If the vDisk is locked, you can just power down the VMs and switch the vDisk back to the appropriate Standard read only mode.

Another reason a user may not be connecting successfully to a desktop is due to permissions. Typically desktops are assigned via Active Directory groups. Verify that the user is in the appropriate group and has been permissioned to use the desktops. This is found in the Citrix Desktop Studio Console.

If the user has the appropriate permissions, verify that there are available desktops left for the user to connect to within the pool. Creating the desktops in VMware and assigning them in Provisioning server are the first 2 steps. Assigning them to Desktop Group in the XenDesktop Console is also a necessary step.

If the users is getting to the log on screen of their desktop but receiving an incorrect password, you might need to verify that the trust relationship between the Provisioning server and the Desktop is still intact. In order for Provisioning Server to track the ‘tokens’, you must create or reset the Active Directory Machine Account via the Provisioning Console.

If they get in and things are slow, check the underlying hardware for obvious performance issues. Successful VDI deployments require sufficient network, storage and compute resources. Any deficiencies in these core components will manifest itself in the user’s session.

Sometimes, it is just a user issue. You know what to do.

vCenter Full of Errors! Not a problem.

2012-02-07T14:59:00.001-05:00

Interesting note from a buddy of mine. He logged into his VirtualCenter (5.x) and found almost all of his Virtual Machines with an error condition. Yet there were NO ALARMS and everything in the environment was running fine. It was basically a non issue.

No harm done but as you can imagine, incredibly annoying. Joseph reached out to VMware support and received word that it was a known issue with no official solution. Support did suggest a vMotion as a possible workaround to clear the alarm condition though. This particular location only had a single vSphere host though so after a quick switch to EVALUATION mode licensing and a Storage vMotion, all was clear again.

Thanks Joe for the story and tip!

How to add a Shortcut for all users in a VDI environment via Group Policy Preferences

2012-01-26T09:37:00.000-05:00

Jeff Miller was using VMware View 5 with Wyse p20’s and needed the ability for users to disconnect from their desktop rather than just locking their machine and turning off the monitor/device. He was running into issues specifically with View 5 and the P20s reconnecting back to sessions that were already in a connected state. (i.e. Users just left the session running and turned off the monitor and headed home hoping to reconnect remotely).

Typically the user would have to attempt several times before establishing a successful connection. Jeff noticed solid black screens after logging in and quick disconnects from the p20 if it couldn’t display the windows desktop properly.

As a workaround/fix he decided to deploy a disconnect icon to all of his users through Active Directory Group Policy Preferences. GPPs are pretty powerful and I’ve seen many clients not fully taking advantage of them. Many of things that were historically placed in a login script can be accomplished elegantly via the GPP interface.

Check out the steps Jeff took to deploy his shortcut via AD GPP.

1. First create a disconnect batch script in your netlogon share (or somewhere else all users can access)

a. The only line you need in the batch file is: %Systemroot%\system32\tsdiscon.exe

2. Create a group policy object in AD and apply to your target users OU.

3. Jeff selected icon 131 which was a red X, however feel free to select any icon of your choice. A full listing of icons and their associated number is found at here.

4. You can either run gpupdate /force to test or logoff and log back on. You should see your shiny new icon on the desktop. The Group Policy Preference also has the ability to place a shortcut on the Start Menu, Quick Launch or any number of other places.

5. Inform your users that this is the best option to use when finished for the day or finished with their remote connection. Also make them aware that this will not close anything on their desktop, it will keep all programs and documents open until they connect again.

Thanks go out to Jeff for the detailed instructions and the REDACTED screenshot!

2012 : Getting back on track– A peek behind the scenes.

2012-01-23T16:44:00.001-05:00

The last 2 months have been pretty quiet from a blog perspective. Only 2 posts for the past 2 months. Not good. WELL below my historic average and personal goals. Behind the scenes, some things have changed and will continue to change a bit. Mostly from an advertising perspective, I will be winding down my individual commitments to advertising vendors and will be showcasing IPM as the exclusive 2012 sponsor.

Expect to see the same independently written blog posts from actual people in the trenches with some new logos and maybe some new design elements.

Looking forward to a great 2012!

Database Permissions in XenDesktop 5–Use SQLCMD mode!

2011-12-27T09:01:00.000-05:00

The database requirements for Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 changed a bit from XenDesktop 4 and trying to explain all of these details to your security conscious DBA can be ~~exhausting~~ ~~fruitless~~ ~~aggravating~~ ~~time consuming~~ challenging occasionally. If you are using the Desktop Studio to initially configure your database, you will need to have the user running the install given Security Admin rights on the database. Apparently, this is not always as easy as it seems.

After some back and forth conversations with the DBA group, out of desperation, I decided to click the Generate… button. Problem solved.

Clicking Generate outputs a nice and easy SQLCMD script that you can give to your DBA that basically answers all of their questions (thanks to the great commenting in the script) and allows them to set up the database environment for XenDesktop using their God Mode privileges. Couldn’t be easier.

If you’ve been struggling coming up with the correct permission requirements for your DBA, give the Generate button a try.

Reverting iOS applications using Dropbox!

2011-12-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes after upgrading an application on an iOS device, new ‘features’ turn into issues and you would like to revert back. The following instructions by Marcos Velez can be used to revert to a more stable version.

Make sure you still have a previous version (Citrix 4.2.3.ipa, Citrix 5.0.ipa or Citrix 5.0.1.ipa) on your local drive. [More on using Dropbox for that below]
If you can’t find it, look for it in the Recycle Bin (Windows), or Trash (Apple). As new, updated applications are downloaded from the iTunes App Store, previous versions are usually deleted and moved to the Recycle Bin, or Trash.
Now, delete the new/current version from iTunes (right click on it and choose Delete)
Delete the new/current version from your iPad (press on its icon for three seconds and then click on the red x)
Once you have deleted the new version from both iTunes and your iPad, drag and drop the old version application file onto iTunes.
Sync your device

To prevent relying on the recycle bin or trash, you can set up DropBox to keep all of your .IPAs and prior versions for you.

First, read my post on Dropbox Extensions
(http://www.vmwareinfo.com/2011/01/dropbox-extensions-to-make-your-life.html)

Then add a link for your Mobile Applications folder to Dropbox. This is usually in C:\Users\<UserName>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications

At this point, all your IPAs will get sucked into Dropbox. When looking for an older IPA, just log into your Dropbox dashboard and toggle the ‘Show deleted files’ option. You can then download the IPA and follow Marcos’ helpful steps to restore your application version.

Always have your stuff when you need it with @Dropbox. A 2GB account is free!
Join here: http://db.tt/GEbA2dPr

PowerShell Tutorial – How to Keep Tabs on XenApp Printer Queues

2011-11-30T08:17:00.000-05:00

Sam Jacobs posted a great PowerShell script and tutorial on IPM’s corporate blog that I wanted to share with everyone.

A few weeks ago, a client of ours began noticing that printer queues on certain XenApp servers were experiencing errors, and jobs sent to those queues were left stranded and never printed. As it turned out, the problem was caused by an updated printer driver, and the issue only occurred when that printer driver was used.

Since there were quite a few servers involved, with 10-20 print queues per server, it seemed like a job for a WMI script. The first version (a .VBS script) looked something like this:

strServer = "."
strQuery = "SELECT * FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_Spooler_PrintQueue "

Set objWMIService = GetObject (“winmgmts:\\” & strServer & “\root\CIMV2″)
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery (strQuery)

Wscript.Echo “Printer” & vbTab & “Jobs” & vbTab & “JobErrors”
For Each objItem In colItems
WScript.Echo objItem.Name & vbTab & objItem.Jobs & vbTab & objItem.JobErrors
Next

Set objWMIService = Nothing
Set colItems = Nothing

While the above worked just fine, due to the varying length printer names, the resultant output was a bit difficult to read. Here’s what the output looked like when run on my local machine:

PowerShell to the rescue! In order to get the same output, only a single line is needed to get the same results in PowerShell (while wrapped here for readability, it may all be placed on a single line):

Get-WMIObject Win32_PerfFormattedData_Spooler_PrintQueue -computerName . | Select Name, Jobs, JobErrors | ft –auto

The command above uses the Get-WMIObject cmdlet to read the print queues of the current server, pipes the output to select the desired fields: Name (printer name), Jobs (Number of Pending Jobs), and JobErrors (Number of Errors), and pipes the output to the Format-Table cmdlet (alias: ft) to automatically give us a nicely formatted table:

Much easier to read!

Now let’s add two additional features. First of all, we need to be able to cycle through the print queues of all our XenApp servers. While this could be done by importing the Active Directory PowerShell module and using some AD cmdlets, it’s pretty easy to just create a file with the names of the XenApp servers. This way, we don’t need to add any additional software to the XA servers.

Since we’re only interested in printers that have errors, it would also be nice to highlight only those printers which have jobs pending (signaling a possible problem).

Here is the PowerShell script with the above features added:

$servers = Get-Content 'CitrixServerList.txt'  
    ForEach ($server in $servers) {  
       try {  
         write-host "Processing printers for: " $server " ..."  
         Get-WMIObject Win32_PerfFormattedData_Spooler_PrintQueue  
             -computerName $server  -ea stop |  
        ?{$_.jobs -gt 0} |  
        Select @{Expression={$_.Name};Label=$server+" printers"},  
                    Jobs, JobErrors |  
        ft -auto  
       } catch [System.Exception] {  
         write-host $server "...cannot retrieve printer names"  
       }  
    }

First, we retrieve the list of XenApp servers (with one server per line in the text file).

We then cycle through each server, wrapping the code in a try/catch block to handle errors (in case one of the servers is offline, for example).

The new parts of the script above:

-computerName  $server    the XenApp server name from the ForEach command
-ea stop		  set the ErrorAction (ea) to stop processing the command if an error occurs
?{$_.jobs -gt 0}	  only show printer queues with jobs pending

The term @{Expression={$_.Name};Label=$server+” printers”} shows how to rename column headings in the output.

Output of the final version above: