Problem:

Recently I was having issues installing the Hotfixes XA650W2K8R2X64001 and XA650W2K8R2X64002 for XenApp 6.5  I keep getting the error "Installation ended prematurely because of an error" and in the event log I would get the below;

"Product: Citrix XenApp 6.5 - Update 'XA650W2K8R2X64001' could not be installed. Error code 1603. Windows Installer can create logs to help troubleshoot issues with installing software packages. Use the following link for instructions on turning on logging support: "

Cause:

After generating a verbose install log I noticed that there was some sort of certificate error

MSI (s) (18:34) 11:53:31:692: Doing action: UninstallCertificates
Action 11:53:31: UninstallCertificates.
Action start 11:53:31: UninstallCertificates.
MSI (s) (18:34) 11:53:31:695: Note: 1: 2235 2: 3: ExtendedType 4: SELECT `Action`,`Type`,`Source`,`Target`, NULL, `ExtendedType` FROM `CustomAction` WHERE `Action` = 'UninstallCertificates'
MSI (s) (18:34) 11:53:31:695: Transforming table Binary.

MSI (s) (18:34) 11:53:31:695: Transforming table Binary.

MSI (s) (18:34) 11:53:31:695: Note: 1: 2262 2: Binary 3: -2147287038
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:702: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Windows\Installer\MSI34DA.tmp, Entrypoint: UninstallCertificates
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:800: Leaked MSIHANDLE (61806) of type 790531 for thread 5160
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:800: Leaked MSIHANDLE (61805) of type 790540 for thread 5160
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:800: Leaked MSIHANDLE (61803) of type 790541 for thread 5160
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:800: Note: 1: 2769 2: UninstallCertificates 3: 3
MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:800: Transforming table Error.

MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:801: Transforming table Error.

MSI (s) (18:04) 11:53:31:801: Note: 1: 2262 2: Error 3: -2147287038
DEBUG: Error 2769: Custom Action UninstallCertificates did not close 3 MSIHANDLEs.
Internal Error 2769. UninstallCertificates, 3
CustomAction UninstallCertificates returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)
Action ended 11:53:31: UninstallCertificates. Return value 3.

With a lot of great help from the guys on the Citrix Forum in turned the problem was to do with a Citrix code signing certificate which had expired on the 12th of November 2011 and had something to do with PowerShell

Workaround:

• On the effect server(s) open an MMC console (Start => Run => MMC)
• File => Add/Remove Snap-in
• Add Certificates and select “Computer account” when prompted, OK
• Expand Certificates => Trusted Publishers => Certificates
• Delete All of the expired Citrix Certificates
• Try running the Hotfix install again

The hotfix in my case re-added the same expired certificate, hopefully Citrix will sort this out soon

UPDATE:

Citrix have now released an update to fix this issue http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131927

References

http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=297715&start=0&tstart=0
 

Problem:

I have just upgraded Citrix Receiver from version 3.0 to 3.1 and I found it only allows connections to HTTPS addresses, currently I am working on test servers so adding a certificate seemed a bit over the top.

Resolution:

There does not seem to be a way to allow HTTP in the GUI or the ADM but it can be done in the registry.

• Open Regedit
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Dazzle on a 32-bit machine or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Dazzle on a 64-bit machine
• Under Dazzle modify the data of AllowAddStore to be A

• Exit Citrix Receiver and restart it.

Problem:

Recently I needed to install a bundle of server 2008 Remote Desktop cals which had been purchased under a Select Plus agreement

My problem was I could not get the automatic activation working within the “TS Licensing Manager” tool as Select Plus is not listed as one of the available license program and tring to use Select or Open got me no where

Solution:

I found a method of manually activating the licenses;

First you will need some details about you Select Plus license;

1. Logon to the Microsoft Licensing Service Center
2. At the Top select License => Relationship Summary
3. Find the appropriate agreement that has the RDS licenses
4. At the top make a note of the “Customer Number:”

Next you will need to change the activation method for you licenses to telephone;

1. Open TS Licensing Manager
2. Right-click the server name and select Properties
3. Change the “Connection method” to Telephone and you will need to select a “Country or Region” down the bottom

Next you will need to get hold of your License Server ID;

1. Within TS Licensing Manager right-click the server and select Install Licenses
2. Next
3. Make a note of the “license server ID”
4. Leave the window open as we will be entering a “key pack ID” soon

Next we will generate our “key pack ID”;

1. Open the webpage https://activate.microsoft.com/
2. Select the option “Install Client Access License tokens”, Next
3. Enter the License Server ID and other details and make sure you set the “License Program” to “Other agreement”, Next
4. Enter the “Quantity” and within the “Agreement number” enter your “Customer Number” from earlier
5. Next
6. If all goes well you should get a confirmation screen with our “key pack ID”

7. Last we need to enter our “key pack ID” into TS Licensing Manager and finish the wizard

References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverTS/thread/3a4a97a5-c1fc-436e-ab56-b8414dc37d8a

https://activate.microsoft.com/default.asp

https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/servicecenter/Home.aspx

The blow shows how to reset file associations via the command prompt.

File associations are per user

Commands

asscoc .<filetype>     Gets the system name for the file type

ftype <system name>     Shows you the path to the current associated program

ftype <system name>=<path> arguments     Changes the association to the provided path

Example (using a DOCX Word file)

Find what the association should be

Either on the same computer as a different users or on a different computer;

RUN:                 asscoc .docx
RETURNS:         .docx=Word.Document.12

RUN:                 ftype docx=Word.Document.12
RETURNS:         Word.Document.12="C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde

Logged on as the effected user

Open an administrative command prompt by right-clicking on CMD and selecting "Run as Administrator"

RUN: ftype      PCOMW\WS=Word.Document.12="C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde (No spaces around the ='s)
RETURNS:       PCOMW\WS=Word.Document.12="C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~2\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /n /dde


Troubleshoot

If you get an error like the below then you are not running in an administrative command propmt

Access is denied.
Error occurred while processing: pcomw\ws.

Problem:

Recently I noticed that clients had not received my changes to my SCCM 2007 software meeting rules, they still had rules that I had previously deleted and they had not received my new rules.

Solution:

After I lot of digging around I found the below error in the policypv.box log on the SCCM server.

CPolicySource::HandleMeteringPolicy: could not retrieve metering rule RULECHG from SQL

After a bit more digging around I decided to delete the files _POLICY_.RTA and rulechg.rta from c:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\inboxes\policypv.box. I then created a new rule and refreshed the policy on a client and after a few min's everything was fixed 

So if your clients are not getting updated software meeting rules take a look in your policyv.box log file and see if you have the same error.

References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/configmgrgeneral/thread/01c7baae-7cce-4f64-b8b3-01ca704c20b0

http://blog.wortell.nl/sanderz/troubleshooting-configmgr-sccm-2007-software-metering/

Problem:

When trying to save a PowerPoint file you get a message similar to the below;

In my case I checked the presentation though out and could not find "Courier" in use

Workaround:

Replace the font listed with another font;

In PowerPoint 2003 select Format => Replace Fonts

In PowerPoint 2007/2010 on the Home tab select Replace Fonts under the Replace drop-down

Select the effected font in the top dropdown, you may notice it has a question mark icon

And select another font of you choice in the bottom drop-down

Click Replace

You selected a single-byte font to replace a double-byte font. Please select a double-byte font

In my case I then got this lovely clear message, thanks Microsoft!

I ended up playing around with the font in the bottom drop-down until I found one that worked, in my case this was "Vrinda", I am told that "Arial Unicode"" should also work if you have that.

SoftYou can enter the command date to view the current time zone

To change the time zone you need to create a link from the appropriate location under "/usr/share/zoneinfo/.." to "/etc/localtime"

For example;

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

The below query will return a list of none system databases on a Microsoft SQL Server;

SELECT name FROM master..sysdatabases WHERE dbid> 4

Or you can run the below to get a list of databases along with their size and remarks;

EXECsp_databases

I want to share one of my recent finds, I have a Citrix farm that has users logged on 24/7 so scheduling a reboot is difficult. Luckily Dane Young over at itvce.com has created a rolling reboot script that does a great job.

In zero-downtime 24/7 environments with shift employees, customers rarely want users to be notified of scheduled or mandatory XenApp server reboots. As a result, most of these environments have reboots disabled or this process is done manually. Unfortunately, this isn’t a good process since the XenApp servers are susceptible to memory leaks which can lead to failure and poor performance. By utilizing the included rolling reboot scripts, environments can take advantage of N+1 overallocation by processing a single server reboot while maintaining the user load on remaining systems. This has been done in such a way that users are not kicked off the system for scheduled reboots.  Instead, the server is removed from load balancing until all sessions have been logged off. Once all sessions have been logged off, the server will go down for a reboot.

http://blog.itvce.com/?p=79

Problem:

I recently had the need to deploy IBM Client Access 6.1 on a Citrix XenApp 6.5 farm, everything was fine for the first month or so and then users started getting the error "PC5250 License Error CWB0999 Unexpected error: unexpected return code 9052 274d"

Cause:

After a lot of digging I narrowed down the problem to thereg key HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\IBM\Client Access\Common\Global System Information\ 

There needs to be a key for each iSeries server that the users will connect to (In my case PROD, TEST and DEV) and under each server key there is a key titled "License Management".

For some reason when in a Citrix season (I have not tried RDP) the server keys do not get created and and the REG_BINAARY value "Date system last checked for nomax" under "License Management" does not get updated.

If the"Date system last checked for nomax" REG_BINAARY value is not updated every 30 days or so the registry information for that iSeries connection is removed and the next Citrix user to start a Client Access connection to that server is given the above license error.

It does not seem to be permissions related in my cause even creating a new iSeries connection within a Citrix session as an administrator does not update "Date system last checked for nomax" you have to be on the Server console.

To me it seems like a bug in Client Access 6.1 running on a remote desktop connection.

Solution:

While troubleshooting the issue with Sys Internals Process Monitor I notices Client Access checks in the registry for "Number of days to wait for next nomax check"

This does not exist in the registry by default so I created "HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\IBM\Client Access\CurrentVersion\Common\License Management\Number of days to wait for next nomax check" on each Citrix server and set to it to 9999 which is about 27 years.

After that I connected local to each of the Citrix Servers and created the required connection with Client Access so the iSeries servers where added to the registry.

One thing to watch out for is that the users Client Access connection profiles need to use the same server name as what is in the registry, if you example their connection uses the IP address then you will either need to change the users connection to use the name or also create a connection local on the Citrix servers using the IP address so the required registry information gets created.

As part of a recent Microsoft SQL Server migration project I had a need to disabled and enable all of the Agent Jobs as various points, the below scripts did the job. This scripts have been tested on SQL 2005 to 2012

Disable All Jobs

USE MSDB;
GO
UPDATE MSDB.dbo.sysjobs
SET Enabled = 0
WHERE Enabled = 1;
GO

Enable All Jobs

USE MSDB;
GO
UPDATE MSDB.dbo.sysjobs
SET Enabled = 1
WHERE Enabled = 0;
GO

Details

Recently I had a need for a tool that would easily allow me or our Service Desk to monitor the health of our XenApp farm, there are obviously commercial products for this but I just needed something simple and free so I created this PowerShell script.

I have been running this on XenApp 6.5.

The script shows,

 - The total number of users logged onto the farm.

 - Each servers uptime

 - Each servers number of logged on users

 - Each servers Citrix load metric

 - Each servers RAM usage %

 - Each servers CPU usage %

 - Each servers Logon Mode

 - (Optional) If each server is currently a member of a give publish desktop

 - (Optional) The script also allows you to monitor CPU and RAM usage on a short list of other servers such as Store Front and SQL servers.

Parameters

At the top of the script the follow parameters can be set as needed

REFRESHINTERVAL = how many seconds the script should wait after getting to the bottom before starting to starting from the top again

EXCLUDESERVERS = a comma separated list of Citrix servers to exclude from being monitored

ServerDesktopName = The name of the published server desktop you wish to check id servers are a membr of, this can be left blank

CheckAdditionalServers = true / false Do you want to define a list of exta servers to monitor CPU and RAM on such as SQL servers

EXTRASERVERS = The list of additional not Citrix servers to monitor

Running the Script

The script will need to be run on a Citrix XenApp Server in the farm you wish to monitor, the server will need the XenApp PowerShell SDK installed http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/Download+SDKS

I generally run a PowerShell script like this powershell -file <patch to XenApp Health script>

If you get a message like the below you  will need to run set-executionpolicy remotesigned

cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details.

Problem

Clients were unable to download updates from our internal WSUS server, the download failed with error 80244019 however the same clients could download the updates fine directly from Microsoft.

Cause

A couple of weeks ago a technician had declined a large amount of active needed updates and run the server cleanup tool, when this was discovered the WSUS SQL Database was restored giving the appearance that everything was back to normal however the server cleanup wizard had removed the files. So the database said the updates were approved and when client tryed to download the update the WSUS server was unable to deliver the file as it no longer existed resulting in error 80244019.

Resolution

1. Locally on the WSUS server open a command prompt
2. Navigate to where WSUS is installed on a 32-bit server this is generally under C:\Program Files\Update Services\Tools
3. Run wsusutil reset

The WSUS will now go down and when it comes up it will start re-downloading the update files, this maybe be a fairly large download.

Links

I found this solution in a PDF posted by Solar Winds, the below is a link to the PDF which has some good WSUS info the PDF is also attached.

http://solarwinds-marketing.s3.amazonaws.com/solarwinds/PDFs/wsus_diagnostics_issues_solved__final_final.pdf

To find the version of SUSE or openSUSE and the service pack / patch level installed via the shell run the command;

cat /etc/SuSE-release

You should get an output like the below;

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11
PATCHLEVEL = 3
 

If you have a need to find the user accounts present on a linux computer via te shell the below command should help;

cat /etc/passwd | grep "/home" | cut -d: -f1

This will list all users on the computer that have a home directory, you could also run cat /etc/passwd to get more inforation and all kinds of system accounts

From time to time the need arises to change a Windows product key, the below uses slmgr.vbs to change the Windows product key and activates Windows;

- Open an Administrative Command Prompt

- Enter the command slmgr.vbs /ipk <product key>

- Enter the command slmgr.vbs /ato

Problem:

Two folders on a file server I administer had been created with a space at the end of the folder name.

If I tried to delete these folders I got the message "Could not find the item"

If I tried to view the security I got the message "The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed"

Solution:

I found is was possible to delete the folders via a CMD prompt using the command;

rd "\\?\C:\path to bad sub dir\bad dir "

External Links

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21072767/windows-7-cant-delete-a-folder-with-a-trailing-space

While setting up Office 365 I ran into an issue with the Active Directory Synchronization tool, at the configuration stage I was presented with the error "Set-CoexistenceConfiguration was unable to modify the source properties. See the event logs for more detailed information"

When looking in the Application event log there was a few messages about a MSQL "could not be found in the forest"

Long story short I have no idea why but I just pressed the retry button and the process completed fine.

Problem:

After my weekend backups I was greeted this morning with a virtual guest that would not power on, instead I was getting the below error;

An on the summary tab for the virtual server I had a message informing me the "Virtual machine disks consolidation is needed"

Resolution:

The first place I checked was the vmware.log file for the guest, you can find this by browsing the datastore for the guest and downloading the vmware.log file. I find opening the log in Notepad++ works best for me.

In the log I spotted the message Content ID mismatch (parentCID ed06b3ce != 0cb205b1)

Next I browsed the datastore for the guest and downloaded the disk descriptors files, these are the smaller VMDK files.

I opened both of the disk descriptor files to check which one had its parentCID set to ed06b3ce​​ (as per the message in the vmware.log)

The entry in the vmware.log file was fairly clear the parentCID was currently set to ed06b3ce but vmware was expecting it to be 0cb205b1. So I changed the parentCID in my disk descriptor file from ed06b3ce to 0cb205b1.

The descriptor file changed from;

And changed to:

I uploaded the changed VMDK file back to the datastore overwriting the file that was there.

Finally I powered on the guest (may has crossed my fingers) and the server started up fine.

The below sql script will return a list of tables in a database along with the table sizes in MB.

select object_name(id) [Table Name], 
[Table Size] = convert (varchar, dpages * 8 / 1024) + 'MB' 
from sysindexes where indid in (0,1) 
order by dpages desc

​

​You will get a report like the below;