ctx_smauser

[kraftsha]

Hi all,

I have been designated to start managing 5 Citrix servers and the guy that put up the farm is not available very much to help. My question is about ctx_smauser. I am trying to troubleshoot some printing problems that our users are experiencing.

PS 3.0
Windows 2000 Servers SP4

Only one of our servers has this ctx_smauser on it. It also is the only one with the Citrix Print Management service on it. From what I have read, I should have this on all my servers and I need it for printing. My users can print on the ones that don't have the user or service. But, they are having issues with the one that does.

What is the right configuration?

Help a newbie, please!

 

[MarkR800]

The CTX_SMAUser account is created during installation and is used to start the Citrix Print Management Service and SMA Service. It has just enough permissions to perform these duties, but it seems to be fairly common that once implemented, those permissions are not enough.

Below are common fixes for the CTX_SMAUser account:

1) Place it in the Power Users group
2) Place it in the Local Adminsistrators group
3) Replace it with the Local System account as the launch account for the services

Option 3 is usually the best and the most frequently adopted in my experience.

If you need to recreate the account on other servers (but you probably don't want to!), the instructions on how to do so are in the following Citrix article:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106393

Hope this helps,
Mark

 

[kraftsha]

Thanks, but, I can't fix the CTX_SMAUser account if it doesn't exist...plus the service doesn't exist so I can't launch it with the local system account. I am getting almost no feedback from the guy who set it up.

I did create the ctx_smauser account on one server, but got stuck when it told me to go to the Citrix Print Management service. How can this not be there? Apparently, the install or upgrade did not go well. This would explain why every printer that a user has is auto-created when I specifically tell it to only create their default.

Guess I need to start over with these servers?

 

[MarkR800]

You could try creating the service manually:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q137890/

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=197

You might need to adapt those instructions a little, and when it comes to editing the Registry you may be able to copy the necessary keys from the working server.

However, if you have things like missing services then I'd be tempted to just rebuild those servers (not what you wanted to hear, I'm sure). You can then document the installations and be sure exactly how they were built.