Thursday 22 March 2012

Clear Internet Browser Cache

I often have to clear internet browser cache as I work on websites and cannot see the updates I have made until I clear the cache.If you are needing to clear Internet browser cache you must be experiencing some of the annoying problems that it can cause. Browser cache can make you think you are in a time warp or maybe even going crazy. You might experience a sense of deja vu when browsing the internet as you might be shown cached pages that can serve you yesterdays news. This means that if a website is updated you seriously could be viewing an old version.
What is Internet browser cache?
Internet browser cache is really the same as the Temporary Internet Files folder.
It is a collection records form your internet browsing sessions. This includes images, sounds, cookies, webpages,and more. If you inspected these files you would be shocked to see that even a mere favicon from a website you might visit is collected.
Why is the Internet browser cache stored?
You are probably wondering why the hell we need to store all this junk when browsing the internet? I sometimes think this as well, however if these files were not stored you would definitely slow your internet browsing down. These files are stored in your cache to make web browsing faster. The items stored in the temporary internet folder can be accessed quicker than downloading the same thing over and over. For example certain elements of a website that you visit often will be stored to ensure a smoother experience.
Clear Internet Browser Cache
Why do you need to clear internet browser cache?
  • Viewing old versions of websites
  • Your internet browsing is struggling
  • Your cache is full
Clear Internet Browser Cache in Google Chrome
1.  Open Google Chrome.
2.  Go to the right corner and looker for the spanner.
3.  Click on it to see the menu. Choose options from the menu. See the screen shot below.
clear internet browser cache
4.  The Google chrome options will appear. Click on the button that says Clear browsing data.
clear browser cache
5.  A Clear browsing data box will appear.
6.  Tick the boxes that you want to delete.
Your choices include: Clear browsing history, Clear download history, Empty the cache, Delete cookies and other site data, Clear saved passwords, Clear saved form data.
browser cache
Clear Internet Browser Cache in Mozilla Firefox
1.  Open Firefox and go to the tools menu.
2.  From the menu choose Clear recent History. See the screen shot below.
clear browser cache firefox
3. The clear Recent history box will appear.
4.  Tick the box next to cache to clear internet browser cache.
clear browser files Firefox
Clear Internet Browser Cache in Internet Explorer
Here’s how to clear Internet browser cache in Internet Explorer.
1.  Press on the wired thing in the right corner. The menu will appear.
2.  Choose Internet options.
clear browser cache IE
3.  On the General tab, under the browsing history section, press on the delete button.
Clear Internet Browser Cache
4.  Again you can choose what to delete. I always try to not delete my saved passwords as I hate typing them in all the time..I am too lazy to get roboform.
Clear Internet Browser Cache
If I have not covered the instructions for your particular browser, as you can see they are all very similar. Let us know how often you clear internet browser cache?

Sunday 11 March 2012

Configure Offline Access in Citrix

Administrators can configure applications that are published to stream to desktops for offline access. This feature allows users to disconnect from the company network and continue to run their applications in offline mode for a specified length of time. No additional configuration is needed while profiling the application to create application profiles or targets that can be accessed offline.
After you configure the offline application policy settings and configure a streamed application for offline access, the next time the user device connects to XenApp, the offline plug-in downloads the application and caches it on the user device.
Important: Before you configure offline access, refer to System Requirements for Application Streaming for the supported platforms and system prerequisites for user devices.
  • Step 1: Configure policy settings for offline access
  • Step 2: Install the online and offline plug-ins on user devices
  • Step 3: Publish the application for offline access
You can complete these steps in any order, but users cannot run applications in offline mode until all steps are completed.


Step 1: Configure Policy Settings for Offline Applications

Configure these Citrix policy settings for Offline Applications:
  • Offline app users (required). Create a list of users or groups who have offline access permission and add that list both when creating the policy for Offline app users and when publishing the application. Users or groups listed in the offline app users policy setting and who are also configured for the application have permission to run offline-enabled applications in online and offline mode. Users who are configured for the application, but who are not added to the policy list can access the application online, but not offline.Users or groups on this list use an offline license to launch applications regardless of whether they are connected to the network or disconnected.
  • Offline app license period (required). Specify the number of days applications can work offline before users have to renew the license (21 days by default, but can range from 2 to 365 days).
  •  For versions 1.0 through 5.1 of the plug-in, the license for each application in the profile is activated when the user launches the application the first time, for online or offline use. Beginning with version 5.2 of the plug-in, when the user launches an application in the profile for the first time, for online or offline use, the offline license is activated for all other applications in the profile, as well. This occurs at the farm level. Thus, the offline license for all applications in the profile expires based on the date of the first application launched the first time, regardless of when the other applications are launched.
  • To configure licenses, administrators can use the License Management Console or command-line tools. They must also ensure they have a sufficient number of licenses to support the total number of users with offline access permission. Users who run XenApp hosted applications can also stream applications to user devices without requiring a separate license. For general information, in the topics for Licensing Your Product, see Getting Started with Citrix Licensing.
  • When users with offline access log on using the online plug-in, they automatically either check out an offline license or renew a license already checked out. If users stay logged on, licenses are renewed automatically each day. If the license is near its expiration date while a user is running the application in offline mode, a notice appears reminding the user to log on (that is, change to online mode). When the user logs on, the offline license is renewed automatically if a license is available.
  •  If the license expires and no license is available, the user cannot launch the application offline.Offline app client trust (optional). Use this setting to enable offline application clients that have disconnected to recreate sessions when reconnecting, without authenticating again.
  • Offline app event logging (optional). Use this setting to enable logging of offline application events to the event log on the server. 
Step 2: Install the Online and Offline Plug-ins on User Devices 
To use the offline access feature, install both the offline and online plug-ins on the user device. The offline plug-in caches each streamed application on the hard drive of the user device. After the application is cached, the user can disconnect from the network or server and continue to run the application in offline mode for the period of time specified in the license.

Step 3: Publish the Application for Offline Access
The offline access feature is available only for applications that you publish as Streamed to client or Streamed if possible, otherwise accessed from a server.

In addition, when publishing an application for offline access, check the application's documentation and Web site to determine whether any special configuration is required on the user device to enable offline access of that application. For example, to stream Microsoft Outlook to the user device for offline access, users must enable the Microsoft Exchange Setting to "Use Cached Exchange Mode."
Configure the application for offline access while publishing the application or later using the application properties: 
  • Enable the application for offline access and select the caching preference.
  • Create a list of users or groups who have offline access permission and add that list both when creating the policy for Offline app users and when publishing the application.

Saturday 10 March 2012

If you loose the connectivity to the Data Store and if you are loosing PS 3.0 OR later

* Users can connect to the farm without no issues (no grace period or any time limitation)
* Do not restart the servers (as it will try to contact DS and try to refresh the LHC)
* Do not reset the local host cache (it will not rebuild since DS is down)
* 96 hours grace period only applied to PS & Metaframe versions before PS 3.0.
* There is no way to seize PS/XenApp servers try contacting DS upon a reboot,
* Unless you use Management Console/Delivery console to manage your citrix farm it wont contact DS,
* LHC is there to perform the required functionality. Its by design.

Friday 9 March 2012

Points to remember in Citrix

Below points are very useful while attending interviews in citrix. Most of us know these statements, but just to gather all the key points at a single place, I have started this post. I will keep it updated everytime.
  • If the data collector fails, existing and incoming sessions connected to other servers in the farm are not affected. The data collector election process begins automatically and a new data collector is elected almost instantaneously.
  • The data collector election process is not dependent on the data store.
     
  •  If the data collector goes down, sessions connected to other servers in the farm are unaffected.
  • If a data collector goes down, there is no single point of failure.
     
  • A primary domain controller or backup domain controller must not become the data collector for a zone.
     
  • If a new MetaFrame server joins the zone or the current data collector is unavailable then an election is triggered to determine a data collector.
     
  • Default time that inactive users will be logged off from the web interface is 20 mins in xenapp 5.0
  • Individual Presentation Server will continue to function for 30 days after it loses connectivity to a Citrix License Server.
     
  • Every five minutes the license server and the products send a heartbeat message to each other to verify that they are mutually communicating. 
  • Some Citrix products can operate in a disconnected mode (not connected to the server). These products allow a user to check out a license and operate the product for a preconfigured period of time that is set by the administrator. In this case, heartbeat messages are not exchanged. One example of disconnected mode is when a user checks out a Password Manager license for a laptop, and then uses the laptop when it is not connected to the server.
     
  • If for any reason, a Citrix product cannot contact the license server to request a license, the product goes into a grace period. This grace period is set by Citrix and differs depending upon the product.
     
  • During a license server connectivity outage, yes, you can reboot your member Presentation Servers, and yes, you can reboot your data collectors. The mps-wsxica_mps-wsxica.ini file will stay put as long as you don’t actively delete it.
     
  • If your environment includes a different directory service (such as Novell Directory Services for Windows) or you are a Citrix administrator without permission to manage Group Policy, use the Delivery Services Console to create policies for your farm.
     
  • In Active Directory environments, the farm GPO takes precedence over the local GPO on the server in the event policy settings conflict.However, Active Directory GPOs take precedence over the farm GPO.
     
  • If you are not seeing all the file types for your application this is because they may not yet be in the datastore. To pull the information from a server’s registry, right-click the server in the console select Other Tasks–>Update file types from registry. To pull FTA from all your servers right-click on the root of the farm and select Other Tasks –> Update file types. Bear in mind this is going to pull from all your server in the farm so if you have a large farm it may take a while.
     
  • Remember you must also configure Client Drive Mapping for Client to Server content redirection to work.
  • client to server redirection: update file types from registry.
     
  • server to client redirection: u can set it in policy.
  • If the license server is behind a firewall, you must assign a static port to the Citrix vendor daemon. 
  • MS Access and SQL Express databases can only be accessed indirectly where you have the option when using MS SQL, IBM DB2 or Oracle.
     
  • The Farm Metric Server gets its information from the zone data collector, which is updated every 15 seconds by each MetaFrame XP server

Thursday 8 March 2012

Which Applications can't be virtualized in Citrix

While most applications can be successfully virtualized for use with SoftGrid, some applications may have certain characteristics that would prevent them from being completely virtualized using the current version of Microsoft SoftGrid.  This includes:
1. Applications that install and rely on a system-level driver, i.e. an application that installs a print driver or a USB device driver. Some applications may allow for the drivers to be installed independent of the other components of the application. As a work around for this scenario, the driver portion of this application could be installed locally on the client system, allowing the other components of the application to be virtualized.
2. Applications that install boot-time services (like RES PowerFuse)
3. Applications that use COM+.
4. MAPI virtualization. For information on SoftGrid and Microsoft Office, see the following article:939796 Prescriptive guidance for sequencing 2007 Office programs in Microsoft SoftGrid http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;939796.
5. COM DLL surrogate virtualization, i.e. DLL’s that run in Dllhost.exe.
6. Applications with licensing enforcement tied to machine, e.g. the license is tied to the system’s MAC address. (Due to sequencing issues; this just wouldn't make any sense)
7. Anti-Virus!
Some of the applications that fall into these categories can possibly still be run in Microsoft SoftGrid as long as the component that cannot be virtualized is installed locally on the same machine as the SoftGrid client. This solution may solve the issue but is not a guarantee the applications will properly function. We recommend you test the applications thoroughly to ensure they meet the expected level of functionality.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Working with Citrix Policies

To control user access or session environments, configure a Citrix policy. Citrix policies are the most efficient method of controlling connection, security, and bandwidth settings.
You can create policies for specific groups of users, devices, or connection types. Each policy can contain multiple settings. For example, you can configure settings to:
  • Configure farm settings such as Virtual IP, Health Monitoring and Recovery, and multimedia acceleration
  • Control sound quality for client devices
  • Allow users to access the Documents folder on their local client device
  • Allow or prevent remote users from being able to save to their hard drives from a session
  • Allow or prevent users from accessing the Windows clipboard
  • Set a required encryption level for Citrix plug-ins
  • Set the session importance level, which, along with the application importance level, determines resource allotment for Preferential Load Balancing
You can work with policies through the Group Policy Editor in Windows or the Delivery Services Console in XenApp. The console or tool you use to do this depends on whether or not your network environment includes Microsoft Active Directory and whether or not you have the appropriate permissions to manage Group Policy Objects (GPOs).

Using the Group Policy Editor

If your network environment includes Active Directory and you have the appropriate permissions to manage Group Policy, use the Group Policy Editor to create policies for your farm. The settings you configure affect the GPOs you specify through the Group Policy Management console.

Using the Delivery Services Console
If your environment includes a different directory service (such as Novell Directory Services for Windows) or you are a Citrix administrator without permission to manage Group Policy, use the Delivery Services Console to create policies for your farm. The settings you configure are stored in a farm GPO in the data store.
 
Note: In Active Directory environments, the farm GPO takes precedence over the local GPO on the server in the event policy settings conflict. However, Active Directory GPOs take precedence over the farm GPO.
 
Tips for Working with Policies
 
If you create more than one policy in your environment, make sure that you prioritize the policies so that it is clear which policy should take precedence in the event of a conflict.
The process for configuring policies is:
  1. Create and name the policy.
  2. Configure policy settings.
  3. Apply the policy to connections by adding filters.
  4. Prioritize the policy.
In general, Citrix policies override similar settings configured for the entire server farm, for specific servers, or on the client. However, the highest encryption setting and the most restrictive shadowing setting always override other settings.

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Local Host Cache in Citrix

A subset of data store information, the local host cache, exists on each server in the farm, providing each member server with quick access to data store information. The local host cache also provides redundancy of the data store information, if for example, a server in the farm loses connectivity to the data store.

When a change is made to the farm’s data store, a notification to update the local host cache is sent to all the servers in the farm. However, it is possible that some servers will miss an update because of network problems. Member servers periodically query the data store to determine if changes were made since the server’s local host cache was last updated. If changes were made, the server requests the changed information.
Refreshing the Local Host Cache

You can force a manual refresh of a server’s local host cache by executing dsmaint refreshlhc from a command prompt. This action forces the local host cache to read all changes immediately from the farm’s data store. Refreshing the local host cache is useful, for example, if the Citrix Independent Management Architecture (IMA) Service is running, but published applications do not appear correctly when users browse for application sets.

A discrepancy in the local host cache occurs only if the IMA Service on a server misses a change event and is not synchronized correctly with the data store.

Recreating the Local Host Cache

You can manually create the local host cache from the farm’s data store. If the IMA Service fails to start or you have a corrupt local host cache, you may need to recreate it.

To recreate the local host cache, stop the IMA Service and then run the command dsmaint recreatelhc. Running this command performs three actions:
  • Sets the value of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\IMA\ RUNTIME\PSRequired to 1.
  • Deletes the existing local host cache (Imalhc.mdb)
  • Creates an empty local host cache (Imalhc.mdb).
You must restart the IMA Service after running dsmaint recreatelhc. When the IMA Service starts, the local host cache is populated with fresh data from the data store.

The data store server must be available for dsmaint recreatelhc

Tuning Local Host Cache Synchronization

to work. If the data store is not available, the IMA Service fails to start.
You can adjust the interval by which member servers query the farm's data store for missed changes. The default interval is 30 minutes. In most cases, this default setting is sufficient.
 
Caution: Editing the Registry incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Citrix cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk. Be sure to back up the registry before you edit it.
You can configure the interval by creating the following registry key on each server you want to adjust, with the value expressed in hexadecimal notation:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\IMA\ DCNChangePollingInterval (DWORD)
Value: 0x1B7740 (default 1,800,000 milliseconds)

You must restart the IMA Service for this setting to take effect.

Most changes made through the Citrix AppCenter are written to the data store. When you open one of these tools, it connects to a specified server. The Citrix Independent Management Architecture (IMA) Service running on this server performs all reads and write operations to the data store for the AppCenter.
If the data store is experiencing high CPU usage when few read or write operations to the data store are occurring, it is possible that the data store is not powerful enough to manage a query interval of 30 minutes. To determine whether or not the data store query interval is causing the high CPU usage on the data store, you can set the query interval to a very large number and test CPU usage. If the CPU usage returns to normal after you set a large query interval, the data store query interval is probably the cause of the high CPU usage. You can adjust the query interval based on performance testing.

To test the query interval, set the interval to 60 minutes and then restart all the servers in the farm. If the data store is still experiencing constant high CPU usage, increase the query interval further. If the CPU usage returns to normal, you can try a smaller value. Continue these adjustments until data store CPU usage is normal.
 
Important: Do not set the data store query interval higher than necessary. This interval serves as an important safeguard against lost updates. Setting the interval higher than necessary can cause delays in updating the local host cache of the farm’s member servers.

Monday 5 March 2012

Safely Remove USB Drives Automatically

All the computer users are nowadays been got quite used to unplug a USB flash drive only after selecting the “Safely Remove USB Drives” option in the System Tray in the Taskbar. Anyone doesn’t wants to skip this step thinking that their USB Drive will get defected.
What’s the reason for this? According to me, it’s only need is to check whether any action such as copying data from or to the drive is going on when it is to be removed as any interruption in the process can lead to corrupted data or dead USB Drive.
But as I am here to tell you about the trick to Safely Remove USB Drives Automatically, so just see how you can safely avoid this step keeping your USB Drive completely safe. In fact, you may already have had this option enabled on your computer but you might not be aware of it and would have been wasting some of your valuable time in those extra clicks.

Steps To Safely Remove USB Drives Automatically

(Note: These steps may differ on different versions of Windows.)
1. The first task is to plug in the USB Drive to your PC. Then, Open Device Manager using the run command “devmgmt.msc”.
2. Expand Disk Drives option, then click on the removable device you have inserted by locating it. Here in the screenshot, it’s “USB2.0 Flash Disk USB Device.”
3. Right-click that device, then click Properties.
4. Click the Policies tab; you should see something like this:

5. Select the first option, i.e. Quick Removal. If the option is already selected then its well and good. As given in the description above, “you can disconnect the device safely without using the Safely Remove Hardware notification icon.”
Don’t take tension that the performance will suffer as results have proved that there’s gonna be no change in the performance. There will surely be a change but that will be in milliseconds that can surely not matter compared to the hassle of selecting Safely Remove USB Drive option each time you connect your USB Drive to the computer. So, just go ahead to Safely Remove USB Drives Automatically and make this change in every computer you tend to use and have fun.

Script to find all the disconnected sessions in citrix servers

I know the effort in logging into all the citrix servers for disconnected sessions and logging them off everyday. So I have designed a batch script which would run the qfarm command in all the servers mentioned in the text file and output the result to a text file. Here goes my script:

@echo off
Title Developped by Chaitanyakumar G
cd \
cd %userprofile%\Desktop\Servers
del /q *
cd \
cd %userprofile%\Desktop\Apps
for /f %%i in (hostnames.txt) do psexec.exe \\%%i -u Domain\username -p UR_PWD cmd /c "qfarm %%i /disc" >> .\Servers\%%i_Applications.txt
pause

In ur desktop, create a folder called Servers where all your servers text files would be created. Create an other folder called Apps where you need to have psexec.exe(you can download it from here). Here you need to create a text file hostnames.txt and place all your citrix servers, no matter which farm they belong to. As this script takes the hostnames from the text file hostnames.txt, we can place all the citrix servers here. Now copy the above script and place it in Apps folder. Now double click it. Once the script is executed, in the Servers folder we can see list of files. We can see all the files here. View by details in the folder view to find the size of the text files. If size of text file is zero, it shows that there are no disconnected sessions for that particular server. If size is more than zero, it shows that there are disconnected sessions. Now login to that particular server and clear the disconnected sessions. In the text file you can also see the application name. So, you can directly open that particular application and disconnect the sessions. This script will be useful if you have lot of citrix applications and servers.

If you still want to reduce the administrator effort, execute the script and once you get the text files in Servers folder, download tslogoff.exe(download it from here). Go through the Readme.txt file about the usage and logoff the disconnected sessions by connecting to the server using psexec.exe

Sunday 4 March 2012

What is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It?

You’re no doubt reading this article because there’s a gigantic hiberfil.sys file sitting in the root of your drive, and you want to get rid of it to free up some space… but you can’t!
Luckily, you actually can delete it, and today we’ll show you how.
image
The more memory you have in your PC, the bigger the file will be.
So What is hiberfil.sys Anyway?
Windows has two power management modes that you can choose from: one is Sleep Mode, which keeps the PC running in a low power state so you can almost instantly get back to what you were working on. The other is Hibernate mode, which completely writes the memory out to the hard drive, and then powers the PC down entirely, so you can even take the battery out, put it back in, start back up, and be right back where you were.
Hibernate mode uses the hiberfil.sys file to store the the current state (memory) of the PC, and since it’s managed by Windows, you can’t delete the file.
So if you never use it, and want to disable Hibernate mode, keep reading. Personally I stick with Sleep Mode the vast majority of the time, but I do use Hibernate quite often.
Disable Hibernate (and Delete hiberfil.sys) in Windows 7 or Vista
You’ll need to open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt in the start menu, and then choosing Run as Administrator. Once you’re there, type in the following command:
powercfg -h off
You should immediately notice that the Hibernate option is gone from the Shut down menu.
You’ll also notice that the file is magically gone!

Disabling Hibernate Mode in Windows XP
It’s a lot easier in Windows XP to get rid of Hibernate mode…. Just head into Control Panel –> Power Options, and then find the Hibernate tab.
Uncheck the box, reboot your PC, and then you can delete the hiberfil.sys file.

Saturday 3 March 2012

Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows

The Disk Defragment utility in Windows XP does not include a way to defragment all hard drives at the same time, which is inconvienient when you have more than one hard drive in your computer.
The method we are going to use is by creating a batch file to defragment all of the drives, one after the other.
The disk defrag utility in Windows XP can be triggered from the command line with the following syntax:
Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc.
Usage:
defrag <volume> [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?]
  volume  drive letter or mount point (d: or d:\vol\mountpoint)
  -a      Analyze only
  -f      Force defragmentation even if free space is low
  -v      Verbose output
  -?      Display this help text
First, we’ll create a file named defragall.bat, and place it anywhere you like, as long as you’ll remember where it is. If you want to run it from the command line, you could place it in the \windows directory so that it will be available in the system path.
For each hard drive, add a line to the batch file. For instance, if we want to defragment drives C: , D: , and F: we will add these three lines:
defrag c: -f
defrag d: -f
defrag f: -f

To run the defrag, just either double-click on the batch file or start it from the command line.

Friday 2 March 2012

Auto Deletion of Temporary Folder

You can set the computer to delete automatically your files in temporary folder. 
To do that click Run from start menu and type gpedit.msc 
and click OK. 
And select Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Terminal Services/Temporary Folder.
Then right click "Do Not Delete Temp Folder Upon Exit
Go to properties and select disable

Thursday 1 March 2012

Allow Remote Control To Your Desktop On Ubuntu

Enabling remote desktop mode is extremely easy on Ubuntu since Dapper. You can allow other users to access your desktop using the VNC Viewer utility that is bundled with Ubuntu, or offered as a free download for Windows.
Note that enabling remote control of your desktop is never a safe thing to do unless you have a firewall installed and configured correctly, and even then is still a potential security problem. Now that you’ve been warned of the risks, let’s move on.
Navigate to the System \ Preferences \ Remote Desktop on the Gnome top menu.
You’ll see this window:
The first two checkboxes need to be checked in order for remote desktop to be enabled.
The Security section is important: If you select the “Ask you for confirmation” code, then you will need to be at the computer in order to allow the other person to access your desktop. If you are trying to remotely access one of your own computers, you will want to uncheck this box.
The second checkbox should always be checked, and you should enter a secure password. You will be prompted for this password when you try to log on.

Tested on: Ubuntu Dapper Drake, Ubuntu Edgy Eft
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