Citrix user logging in affects other users already on system. 1

[chifu]

I have a problem where a user logging into Citrix will affect other users already on the system. eg. If a user is copying a large file across the network, another user logging in or out will stop the copy with the message "Specified network name no longer available". I also find that I can some times get the message by starting the Citrix Server Administrator and displaying the sessions on the server the copying user is on. This has made my Citrix servers unusable because user's open files may become lost when a session is affected.

Have not found any one who can tell me what is wrong or even anyone who knowns about the problem.

We have a two Citrix server farm, on Windows NT Terminal Servers, separate file server and Windows NT clients. The servers have the latest service packs.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

This is a strange issue - I haven't seen anything like it!

All I can think of is that there is something in this users' profile that causes the error. Maybe you could rebuild the profile?

Does it always happen to this user, or anyone that uses the client machine? If the user logs on at a different client machine, does the same thing happen?

The strangest thing is your comment about losing files when a session is affected; each session runs in its own memory space and should (in theory) have no impact on another user.

Maybe you have an issue with your roaming profiles (if you use them).

Perhaps you could implement a policy that ties down affected areas?

Do you have a test server? You could get this user to log onto it and resolve the issue away from the main user base.

Hope this helps!

 

[chifu]

Thanks for the remarks.

To answer the questions posed;

This happens on all clients, even at the console.

Files are lost because the session appears to loose contact with the file server and any work that is open becomes un-saveable. The strange thing is that the lost of contact with the file server appears to be momenterily and I can open another file with out any problems.

I have also now noticed that when in Citrix Server Administrator, it sometimes will loose contact with the other Citrix server and display "can not be authenticated on this server".

There appears to be no problems when using the desktops outside of Citrix and talking to the file server directly.

I have tried changing user profiles in various ways and this does not seem to help.

A very strange problem indeed.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

If this happened for every user, I would suspect the ICA browser, or licensing. Licensing would be my bet at the moment.

If it only happens for one user, and you have re-created this user's profile, there must be something different about this user - apps, drive mappings, database urls, etc.

What happens if you rename the user's roaming profile, then go into UMD and click OK to create a fresh profile? (The purpose of renaming the original is so that you can easily roll back if there is an issue with the default profile).

As another thought, possibly a timeout in one of the user's connections is causing the issue. Is there anything in either a Citrix server or related server's event log that shows a timeout relating to this user?

Hope this helps!

 

[Voyager1]

Just a curiosity - do your users all have their own user names, or do several log in using the same one? - Bill

"You can get anything you want out of life, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want" - Zig Ziglar

 

[chifu]

To voyager1 and Citrixengineer

Happens on all users and each have their own name, but I have been doing most of the testing using just two users when trying to solve the problem, which means the same user is logging in more then once.

If it is a licensing issue, would that be at the NT level or Citrix ?

I will look at the suggestions and see what happens.

Thanks

 

[CitrixEngineer]

It may depend on the application(s) you are using;

I have had to set up several scenarios where the same user logged in from different terminals at the same time, so it certainly can be done.

Maybe Filemon could give some pointers as to which files are accessed just before the problem occurs.

http://www.sysinternals.com

If it's licensing, I'd suspect the Terminal Server rather than the Citrix licensing.

Are there any messages in the event logs on
a) The Citrix server or
b) The file server that the file was being copied from or
c) The PDC during authentication

Hope this helps

 

[TheOtherKiwi]

What is happening to server utilisation at the time of this incident? I noticed a dodgy network card driver severely impacted performance on one of my servers here - copying files was a dog until got a new driver off the net (IBM Netfinity Fault Tolerant PCI doo dah).

 

[Pritch5000]

When two users, using the same login name, were using the same server, I had the situation where the first user would login and autocreate their default printer, the other user would login and when the second default printer was autocreated it became the default printer for both users. If the first user logged out and back in again then the first default printer would be set for both users. Magically all the problems went away by creating individual names.

This is a problem and my opinion is that all users MUST have their own username. This is now standard in our installations.

Hope this helps.
pritch.