Month: April 2007

Citrix ICA client reports “Proxy connection failed” when connecting

I had some trouble getting the ICA client to connect to a site in Ubuntu today. Actually, it’s been for a few days. I’m not entirely sure if I’ve used Ubuntu for Citrix stuff.

Anyway, whenever clicking on a connection on the Citrix web interface, the webica application would fail with this error: “Proxy connection failed: Internal error during proxy evaluation”

As I don’t use a proxy, this was a little odd.

After searching on the Citrix forums, I found this nugget which resolves the issue:

  • Open up the terminal window
  • cd
  • mkdir .netscape
  • cd .netscape
  • gedit preferences.js
  • In the editor, type:
    user_pref("network.proxy.http","");
    user_pref("network.proxy.http_port", 80);
    user_pref("network.proxy.type", 0);
  • Save the file

Now, when you click on the Citrix icon, you should connect with no issue.

If you do happen to use a proxy server, change network.proxy.type to 1, and enter the relevant proxy details in the other lines.

Damn Fine Citrix and Terminal Server Installation Guides

Installing Citrix correctly, and with confidence is generally an important issue. Some bad choices early can cause you a lot of headaches later on.

Today, I found a good site a Methodology in a Box, which outlines good practices for deploying various versions of Citrix and TS.

Even better, the guides can be downloaded in PDF format!

Windows Vista in “Dude, Where’s my Start Menu?”

When dropping Windows Vista into an existing network, you may notice some unusual issues that weren’t apparent in Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

The main cause of a headache for me was the new interpretation of the Group Policy settings that Vista utilises.

Because most of the networks that I manage rely on roaming user profiles, it’s not uncommon for me to use folder redirection to redirect the Start Menu and Desktop. These are set so that the user cannot change the contents of these folders, and they specifically show programs that only I allow.

So, all is good. Until Vista came along and the contents of the Start Menu suddenly disappeared. Clicking on the ‘All Programs’ links showed nothing at all. Eeep!

After about 2 hours of searching as to why this might happen, I eventually discovered it was a group policy setting that works differently (and by its interpretation, correctly) to Windows XP.

Group Policy EditorThe setting in question is User Configuration > Adimistrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Remove User’s Folders from the Start Menu

In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the setting prevents the user’s profile folders from appearing. This is useful if you are using folder redirection and don’t want the default Start Menu icons to appear. However, Vista includes the redirected folders as excluded, and as such – nothing appears.

The difficulty hunting this down of course is that the group policy results show a successful redirect, which of course is exactly what it’s doing

The Case of the Disappearing CD Drives

I had a bit of a problem with a restored computer where the CD drives would not appear in My Computer in Windows XP.

After a little bit of grief, I found that the problem was a simple registry setting: http://www.siliconguide.com/qa/forum/messages/71.shtml

To resolve the issue

  • Open up the registry editor (Start > Run > regedit and click ‘OK’)
  • Navigate to the following folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
  • Delete the keys Upperfilters and Lowerfilters
  • Close the registry editor

Once you have deleted the registry keys, either reboot Windows, or scan for new devices in Device Manager. The CD drive(s) should now appear, and work as normal.

Get Network Manager to stop asking you for the keyring password with pam_keyring

As I’m using network manager to control wireless access on my laptop and a desktop computer in my home, I’ve decided that the keyring manager is a nuisance.

I couldn’t bear for it to constantly ask for a password every time that I needed to log on to a wireless network to retrieve the stored password. This is further compounded by the inevitable question: “Why do I have to enter my password again?”

Over at the Ubuntu forums the same question has been asked. Thankfully, there is a resolve that will also be included in the Feisty release.

The easiest way for Ubuntu user is to download the .deb package of pam_keyring and install on your system.

Once installed, so the following:

  • Open a terminal window
  • Type cd /etc/pam.d
  • Type sudo gedit gdm
  • In the editor, and the following:
    ## Added so that NetworkManager doesn't keep asking for Keyring password.
    ## relies on having same password to keyring as login password.
    auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass
    session optional pam_keyring.so

Save the file, and then try it out.

The catch is that the keyring manager must match your login password. If you have a different password set already, then the only way to make pam_keyring work is to delete your existing keyring and restart:
killall gnome-keyring-daemon
rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/*
gnome-keyring-daemon

or alternatively change your login password to match your keyring.

Once you have entered the network key of the wireless LAN, you should find that passwords and automatically stored and retrieved.

And this works for any other Gnome applications that use the keyring too.