ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH! (aka Citrix disconnects)

[gbaughma]

Citrix keeps bumping people out...

it seems to be an idle timeout issue after 10 mins, but it's actually CLOSING the citrix ica client, not giving a warning ("Your session will be closed...) or anything.

I have done the following:
Citrix Connection Configuration - ICA/TCP... well, those settings are greyed out under Timeout settings.. however, there is a checkbox in "Connection", there is a "1" in Disconnection, and there is a 180 in "Idle".

I have looked at the ADUC (Active Directory Users and Groups) and all of the users are either set to "Never" in their sessions tab, or 3 hours... either way, still knocked off after 10 mins.

I have enabled the icakeepalives in the registry, and set them for 60 (I'm assuming that's seconds) as well.

It's STILL bumping us out after idle of ten minutes.

The problem (before someone asks) is that the import routines that run on the citrix sessions can take a half hour or so to run... so our folks log in, start the routine, and walk away to work on other things. They don't physically sit there moving the mouse.

Any other places I can look? This is of high importance for me (and my boss! Eek!)

Thanks in advance!

Oh... It's Citrix Presentation XP, if that helps....



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[gbaughma]

UPDATE:

OK, it's not an idle timeout issue. I managed to catch briefly the message that popped up before the ICA session dumped... it said that the connection had been interrupted; not that it had timed out.

So, we're running Citrix XP SP3; we're going to put in SP4 this evening (Thursday) and see if that fixes things.

Other things that I did:
Adjusted the MTU of the router between this building and the building where the citrix server is; it's on a 54Mbit wireless link (the buildings are only a few blocks apart, line of sight). I don't think it's a latency issue; ping times are good <2 ms, no dropped packets. However, it could be a keep-alive issue. The reason I tweaked the MTU settings (from auto in the router to manual) is to eliminate fragmented packets.

With the ICA keepalives enabled, it *shouldn't* be dropping the connection in the router, although I won't swear to it, and that's the next thing that I'll be looking at, unless someone else has another possibility that I should pursue.

As always, thanks in advance for any thoughts or insight.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[gbaughma]

For those who care: Problem solved!

It turned out to be a hard TCP/IP timeout limit in the router that we were using.

I switched the router to a MikroTik and haven't had a disconnect since.

Just thought someone reading this thread would want to know. That one was a fun one to track down though.

Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[scanjam]

You may have been saved by enabling / utilising Session Reliability? But that may only be available as of Presentation Server 3.0/4.0??? It would have kept the session viewable at least, and the message woudl have come up with "disconnected, attemtpting to reconnect" so you would have known it was a network issue there for sure, but perhaps it woudl have simply reconnected the users after 5-10 seconds ot network outage ...??

good troubleshooting!
James

 

[gbaughma]

Nope.... session reliability and ICA Keep-alives didn't solve the problem.

Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[scanjam]

did the sessions stay running on the server? but just "drop off"

are you certain you have session reliability enabled and running correctly?

anyways, at least the major issue is resolved for now.. even if it is a bit of a weird one... stupid I.T - nice work!

 

[wangod69]

Greg can you elaborate on the specific TCP timeout setting you changed in the router? What type of router?

 

[gbaughma]

I didn't change a setting in the router.

I changed the router.

I had a router go bad, so I dashed home and got a (cringe) Linksys router... I got the system back up, but there's a hard-coded TCP timeout in the router.

So I switched it out with a Mikrotik, and haven't had an issue since.


Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com