Category: HOWTO

How to find desired patches (aka CRs) on CA support site

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

Among the big software vendors I have to deal with, CA support site is definitely the winner in the bizarre competition – how hard is to find the relevant downloadable. Well, it is pretty easy to locate the Download Center itself in the menu on the left, but all that you get there is latest service pack of the product. Despite that, CA support always want you to be on the latest patch level (“cumulative release” aka CR) to be able to help you – and it is not so clear where to find it. Long time ago I got the direct link to the list of all released CRs for SiteMinder family and used it since then instead of the Download Center.

Now, after almost three years working with CA SiteMinder, I accidentally discovered were the list of all CRs is actually located:

  • Go to “Support by Product” in the left side menu
  • Select your favorite product in the very long drop-down list
  • Click on “Recommended Reading”
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the frame with the links

And – voila! – here is the desired “CA SiteMinder Hotfix/Cumulative Release Index” link. (Obviously, you have to be logged in to CA support site to get access to the link I post here…)

How to fix disabled Preferences in Citrix Receiver for Windows

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

Imagine that you’ve just installed Citrix Receiver for Windows 3.0. The nice broadcast icon already appears in system tray, but Preferences item in the context menu is disabled for some reason. The system logs has no relevant errors, and Citrix is not mentioned at all under Programs in the Start Menu. This is the time to read the documentation and discover that Microsoft .NET 2.0 or higher is required for Citrix Receiver to operate. Unfortunately, Receiver installation process does not verify that .NET is actually installed on your machine…

How to turn on debug log in WebSEAL

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ 4 Comments

You can turn on debug logging with “trace” utility from “pdadmin” shell via “server task” call. Here is the general format of the call:

server task <instance>-<host> trace set <component> <level> file path=<path>

The parts in the angle brackets should be replaced with appropriate values:

  • <instance> – the name of WebSEAL instance
  • <host> – hostname of the server that runs WebSEAL
  • <component> – name of the component to turn logging on for (see below)
  • <level> – log level to use (1 to 9, where 1 is the most detailed; use 0 to turn logging off)
  • <path> – filename of the log file to fill with the information

The list of the components can be obtained with “trace list” command. Among the useful WebSEAL-related components:

  • pdweb – trace all WebSEAL-related information
  • pdweb.debug – list of HTTP header going trough WebSEAL
  • pdweb.snoop – same, but including message body
  • pdweb.snoop.client – same, but only for data sent between WebSEAL and the web client
  • pdweb.snoop.jct – same, for data sent between WebSEAL and the actual web servers (aka “junctions”)
In the example below you can see how to turn on debugging of the web traffic that goes through WebSEAL. The log will go to “C:\pdweb.debug” file. [ Update (April 2013): How to open the ‘pdadmin’ shell. ]
C:\>pdadmin
pdadmin> login
Enter User ID: sec_master
Enter Password: ********
pdadmin sec_master> server task default-webseald-tameb trace set pdweb.debug 2 file path=C:\pdweb.debug
pdadmin sec_master>

You can read more about “server task trace” in the TAMeb documentation.

Upgrading NetScaler VPX

~ Anton Khitrenovich ~ Leave a comment

Last week I had to upgrade the NetScaler VPX box in our lab from version 9.2.something (one it was initially installed with) to the latest available (9.3.something at this moment). Quick search revealed a topic from Citrix Forums (which was not really helpful at that moment) and a KB article aiming to solve specific upgrade problem – which convinced me that it is at least doable. The lack of the information about the process usually means one of two things – either nobody needs that (hard to believe in this case) or it is too obvious to post about it. Actually, the upgrade process is really simple. Yet, this post may save you several minutes… Continue reading “Upgrading NetScaler VPX” →