Remko Weijnen's Blog (Remko's Blog)

About Virtualization, VDI, SBC, Application Compatibility and anything else I feel like

Today I stumbled upon Shodan, a search engine for devices and services.

I decided to search for Citrix and this was the first page of results:
SNAGHTMLf942758

It’s interesting to see that we get details such as the name of published applications. But it’s possible to get even more details:

SNAGHTMLf96a047

 

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  • Filed under: General
  • ShareFileLogoThe Citrix ShareFile Sync application is quite limited in functionality, one of those limitations is that you can only synchronize to a single (one) local folder.

    As Helge Klein wrote in his excellent article "Configuring Citrix ShareFile Sync from PowerShell" this is simply a GUI restriction and not a restriction in the actual ShareFile sync engine.

    Helge describes that you can easily do this in PowerShell with the following example:

    While the command was accepted, nothing was synchronized.

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    Convert Citrix License Server VPX to OVF

    I wanted to run a virtual Citrix License server in my LAB.

    Unfortunately Citrix only provides the VPX License Server in XenServer format (.xva). If you want to run the VPX on VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V you need to convert it first.

    The option to convert a Xen Virtual Appliance to OVF format was removed in XenConvert 2.4.1. So for a conversion you need version 2.3.1.

    Here are the direct download links:

    However when I tried to convert the downloaded VPX (Citrix_License_Server_VPX_v11.10.0_Build_12002.xva) I got the error "Failed to decode tar header record":

    Failed to decode tar header record

     

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  • Filed under: Citrix
  • Run a Process when Citrix Receiver Exits

    A while ago I was doing some research for Magic Filter when I stumbled upon something interesting within Receiver.

    Inside wfica32.exe is a function called _Eng_RunExecutableOnExit. That name caught my interest, I’ve made it a little more readable with Ida Pro:

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  • 4 Comments
  • Filed under: Citrix
  • Magic Filter Preview

    In Enterprise environments users are often working on a remote (virtual) desktop such as when using SBC or VDI.

    They typically get a full screen session, perhaps on a thin client, and have not idea that they are using a remote desktop.

    The Problem
    imageHowever when they press Ctrl-Alt-Delete they get either the local Security Attention Screen / Task Manager or nothing at all if it has been blocked.

    Clever users know they can use alternative key combinations such as Shift-F2 for Citrix or Ctrl-Alt-End for RDS.

    But that’s not the seamless experience we want to give our users, is it?

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  • Filed under: ThinKiosk
  • PNAgent Icon Data Algorithm

    Some time ago I wrote about the PNAgent data that is stored in the registry in XML format.

    After that post Andrew Morgan asked me if I could extract the PNAgent icons from the XML data.

    That got me interested so let’s look at this data!

    If you look at XML from PNAgent the icondata as in the AppData.Details.Icon node you’ll see something like this:

    image

    Seems like the icon data is stored/encrypted in a proprietary format.

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    Yesterday I was troubleshooting an application that was migrated to Citrix XenApp.

    The application is able to use a high precision scale which is attached to the client pc’s com port. This com port is redirected to XenApp.

    While testing users reported several issues, let’s have a look at them.

    Error configuring COM Port
    Within the application the comport to which the scale is connected must be configured:

    De compoort lezer staat uit

    After pressing "Registreer" to register the new com port the following error message was shown

    Er staat geen compoort in het register. Registreer eerste de juiste compoort

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    Scriptable Citrix Password Encoder

    A while ago I published a tool to Encode and Decode Citrix passwords. Today I am publishing a small update to this tool that makes it scriptable by adding a COM interface.

    If you start the tool without parameters you will get the GUI, just like before:

    Encrypt | Decrypt Password | Hash | Citrix | Ctx1

    To use the COM interface you first need to register the executable with the /regserver switch:

    CtxPass /RegServer

    After the registration you can call it using any language that supports COM. To get you started I wrote a few examples

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    The case of the COM Port Redirection

    SecutestOne of my colleagues asked me to assist in troubleshooting an application called SmartWare FM running on Citrix XenApp.

    This application reads data from an external device called SECUTEST.

    The device is connected to a COM port which is redirected to the XenApp session. In contrast to Microsoft Remote Desktop Services COM ports are not automatically redirected in XenApp but need to be mapped via eg a logonscript (NET USE COM1: \\Client\COM1:) or using UEM.

    In my case the COM port was mapped with RES Workspace Manager:

    image

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    Change Tab Order in an Executable

    An application called Cardiology PACS was recently packaged for a Citrix XenApp environment. The functional tester reported a strange problem at the logon screen: after entering the username it was not possible to go to the password field with the TAB key.

    This was a strange observation since I cannot imagine XenApp interfering with tab stops. So what was going on?

    In the old situation the user was starting the application on his local pc. The application remembered the last username and pre-filled this, therefore the cursor was already in the Password field. The user simply entered his password and hit the Enter key:

    image

    On XenApp the Username field is not pre-filled because the last username is kept globally per machine. Therefore the user has to enter both the username and the password:

    image

    I tested the Tab key behavior in both situations and as I expected it didn’t work in both situations. This happens because the Tab Order has been messed up by the programmer (if you press Tab 9 times you do end up in the Username field).

    Because this is something that would annoy me if I were the user I decided to fix it.

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