Citrix Web Interface 5.x - Slow!

After a lot of testing with web interface 5.0, it turned out that it was extremely slow to populate applications via our Access Gateway, especially after a reboot of the Web Interface server or IISReset.

It seems that the issue is caused by CRL check to Verisign and if the web server does not have permission to go out to the internet. CTX117273

The fix : Disable this check via ASP config file

(ASPNET.CONFIG or APP.CONFIG)
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
< configuration >
    < runtime >
        < generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/ >
    < /runtime >
< /configuration >

While your at it, make your access console go faster with a similar fix for it.CTX120115

 Create a file in c:\windows\system32\ called mmc.exe.config
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? >
< configuration >
     < runtime >
        < generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false" / >
     < /runtime >
< /configuration >


 Microsoft link regarding this issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/936707

Sync ADUC and Local Computer Description fields

This is a script to take the description field in Active Directory Users and Computers and place it in the local computer description field. I'm surprised this field doesn't sync automatically. Anyway you could add this to a login or startup script. Or schedule to run every month or so, depend on what your use is. I just wanted the fields to match if the server was retasked (is that a real word?).
 

Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
Set objComputer = GetObject("LDAP://" & objSysInfo.ComputerName)

'msgbox objComputer.Description 'for testing to view pop up of description field

Set Obj= GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer).InstancesOf("Win32_OperatingSystem")
For Each x In Obj
   x.Description = objComputer.Description
   x.Put_
Next

Citrix Web Interface based on Client IP

I looked all over the Internet and no one could provide details on how to accomplish this without the Citrix Access Gateway.
Then after our company purchased the access gateway (very similar to a Cisco web VPN except using SSL) I found the web interface SDK.

link to web interface sdk site
http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Web+Interface+SDK

it turns out the the SDK has a step by step tutorial on how to do exactly this, filter applications that appear on the web interface based on the clients IP. It also seems the new web interface is written in .NET and very easy to create your own custom web interface or just add the login and applications to your own site. Anyway it's worth a look to do some fancy stuff. I wish we found this earlier.
I hope this helps someone else.

Also wanted to mention that it not only needs the access gateway to do this filtering, but it requires another piece of Citrix software, Advanced Access Control.The Advanced Access Control installs similar to Presentation Servers with the whole farm setup.

This is a link to the Advanced Access Control 4.0 software and architecture.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107386

Citrix Web Interface 4.6 Customization

It has been a while since i posted. I usually only post when I try to do something that seems no one has info on.
Well I was trying to get our citrix page to match our company site format. After alot of digging through the web interface files i found the following.

If you want to customize the login and logout pages
There are two main files which are loaded that do all the formating and styling.
inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\app_data\auth\include\layout.ascx
inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\app_data\auth\include\style.inc

inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\auth (or whereever your webroot is)
this is the folder where all the files load from, so if you specify any relative paths they start here.

If you want to customize the applications pages
There are two main files which are loaded that do all the formating and styling.
inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\app_data\site\include\layout.ascx
inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\app_data\site\include\style.inc

inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\AccessPlatform\site (or whereever your webroot is)
this is the folder where all the files load from, so if you specify any relative paths they start here.

Enjoy!

Terminal Servers Redirect Desktop / My Documents to DFS Share

I had setup two terminal servers to redirect the desktop and my documents folder to a network DFS share. This way the users would have the same info on both.
Two annoyances were the errors with My Documents unable to redirect

EventID: 112 Source: Folder Redirection
Failed to perform redirection of folder My Documents. The files for the redirected folder could not be moved to the new location. The folder is configured to be redirected to <\\%HOMESHARE%%HOMEPATH%>. Files were being moved from to <\\my.domain\Data\Home\myuser>. The following error occurred while copying to <\\my.domain\Data\Home\myuser\desktop.ini>:
Access is denied.

It turns out there is an issue with having the my documents folder automatically move the contents of the folder to the new location and the desktop.ini file. Once disabled this went away, luckily my users don't have any data in the local my documents folder so i can get away with this.

And the other annoyance was launching an application from the desktop (now hosted on the network share) now prompted me with a security dialog before allowing me to run any apps on desktop.
This is correctable by setting the Internet Explorer Trusted sites to contain \\my.domain
Instead of doing this for all my users, I setup a GPO with these IE settings.

Orrtax - Intellitax

I have never been fond of Tax software. Having to deal with this one turned out to be more trouble than I could have imagined.
It was tough enough setting this up on a terminal server, but it became nearly impossible after the company got bought out and the online activation servers were taken offline. bah!
Anyway their tech support were schmucks. They even claimed that the 2002 software wouldn't run on Server 2003 because it was an old MS-DOS version, but it did after editing their bat files.

Also their 2003 - 2006 year software can be setup on a terminal server with Full Security if the
%system drive%\program files\Intelltax\
and the
shared %system drive%\intellitax
folders are located.
if not you will get a error that is was unable to start security.

Anyway, I hope no one else has to ever deal with their software.

By the way I was so frustrated with their software and the fact that no one had any good technical info on their software (after googling) that i decided to start a blog.

Now i have the fun of playing with OLTPro Desktop 2008. Hopefully they write better software that can be easily replicated to a DR server.