Manually Remove A Server From A Citrix Farm

When I tried to use the Citrix management console to remove an old server from my Presentation Server 4.0 farm, I got an error that said: "The Presentation Server Console failed to remove the server. Error Code:80000007"

Since using the console didn't work, I had to use the dscheck utility provided by Citrix to manually remove the server from the datastore. Here is the command to use, where servername should be replaced with the name of the server you want to remove from the farm (CAUTION: If you don't specify a server name, ALL servers in the farm will be deleted!):

dscheck /full servers /deleteall servername

Citrix Web Interface 5.2 and Presentation Server 4.0

We are currently in the process of migrating from Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 to XenApp 5.0 FP2, and have applications published from both farms.

I recently upgraded our Citrix Web Interface servers from version 5.11 to 5.2. It was a very simple, quick upgrade. However, after the upgrade, nobody could launch applications from servers running Presentation Server 4.0.

The problem ended up being that version 5.2 of the Web Interface does not support Program Neighborhood Agent/XenApp Plugin connections to 4.0 farms by default. I spent quite a while reading through the instructions, but missed that information somehow. There is one line in the WebInterface.conf file that has to be manually edited in order to enable connections to 4.0 farms:

To configure support for Presentation Server 4.0, Presentation Server 4.0 for UNIX, and XenApp 4.0 for UNIX

Updated: 2009-09-07

In this example, you want to configure a site for compatibility with Citrix Presentation Server 4.0, Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for UNIX Operating Systems, and Citrix XenApp 4.0, with Feature Pack 1, for UNIX Operating Systems. New Web Interface sites are not initially compatible with these products—an additional manual site configuration step is required.

1. Using a text editor, open the WebInterface.conf file and locate the following line:

   RequireLaunchReference=On

2. Change the setting to Off, as follows:

   RequireLaunchReference=Off

   Note: Setting the RequireLaunchReference parameter to Off disables pass-through authentication to XenApp VM hosted apps. Users of this site will be required to enter their credentials each time they access a VM hosted app.

Here are some links to information on this issue:

Citrix support forum thread: http://forums.citrix.com/message.jspa?messageID=1410690
Citrix Web Interface 5.2 documentation: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/index.jsp?topic=/web-interface-gransden/wi-server-requirements-gransden.html
Workaround for problem: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/web-interface-gransden/wi-configure-support-cps-4-gransden.html

I would like to know why Citrix didn't make this vital information more visible, instead of tucking it away in a tiny section of the server requirements section of their online documentation. It would have been nice if they included at least a warning, if not a option to enable 4.0 access, in the Web Interface 5.2 install wizard, rather than relying on the customer to manually edit the configuration file.

Passthrough in Web Interface 5.x

I was going crazy trying to figure out how to get applications to launch with the credentials of the user that was logged on to the Web Interface. Passthrough worked fine for the initial logon to Web Interface, but after that a Windows logon box appeared for each application that was launched.

Apparently there is no way to configure this in the Access Management console. However, I did finally find a way to modify the default.ica file (located at "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\XenApp\conf\" in my environment) to allow full passthrough.

Assuming you have already enabled passthrough authentication to the Web Interface web site in the Access Mangement console, simply add the following lines under the [WFClient] section in the default.ica file:

EnableSSOnThruICAFile=On
SSOnUserSetting=On

Do this for every Web Interface server and it should work immediately!

Quickly unpublish and publish applications in Citrix XenApp

I have been looking for an easy way to stop users from connecting to a Citrix XenApp server without actually disabling logons completely. I found the answer in another blog and thought I'd share it here as well.

http://www.virtualpro.co.uk/2008/09/29/citrix-unpublish-applications-script/

Welcome, IT Admins!

Thanks for checking out my new blog, IT Discoveries. My name is Aaron Barker, and I am an IT System Administrator. I created this space to give me somewhere to share my thoughts on anything Information Technology related, particulary cool new tools, scripts, software, etc. I hope I can post some valuable information that will help you in your job.