Citrix Receiver for Mac issues

Ever run into the following error dialog when trying to use applications on a Citrix server:

SSL Error 61: You have not chosen to trust
"XXXX Certificate Authority",
the issuer of the server's security certificate.

Error number: 183

I'm running a MacBook Pro mid-2011 with Mac OS X Lion, and in my case "XXXX" corresponds to Network Solutions.  A project I'm working on has Citrix gateway access to applications, but when I click on one fo the links, I get the error shown above.  I searched the Citrix forums and support pages, and found one article that pertained to the Windows client only, where you had to go into MMC and change some settings to allow pass-thru authentication for all ICA communications.  But there was nothing for Mac (or Linux).  I have the latest version of Citrix Receiver 11.4.3, but there isn't any configuration setting that is even close to what you would do with the Windows client.

I found an old posting from 2003 that pertains to certificates, CTX102462, so I thought I would give this a try since it is easy to backout if the modifications don't work.  A shortcut of the steps are:

1. On a Windows machine that I can successfully  establish a Citrix connection with, I exported the certificate for Network Solutions in DER format.  In my case it was from a Windows 7 VM.

2. renamed the file to have a .crt suffix

3. Opened the keychain access utility on my Mac

4. Imported the .crt file nto my login keychain

5. accessed the Citrix server URL and authenticated

6.  Clicked on an application link, and the application started successfully and I no longer got the error dialog about not trusting the certificate authority on the App Gateway server.

I haven't figured out what to do about my Linux box connecting tot he Citrix server yet - I was getting a similar error when connecting from an Ubuntu Natty Narwhal install.  I guess one OS at a time and I'll post an update if I find a way to get my Linux machine to be able to connect and get successfully authorized to use the available applications...

Accessing Samba share on OS X server from Windows 7

Arrgghhh!!  Working as a consultant for a local city PUD, I helped setup a Samba fileserver running on a Power Mac with Snow Leopard Server on a Windows Domain.  Connecting from another Mac is trivial.  But try and connect from a windows 7 desktop by browsing the network or searching by NetBios name or IP address keeps coming up with: 

error code: 0x80070035 network path not found.  

Even though the server is on the network and is pingable, and is properly attached to Active Directory, the Windows computer can't find the server...

Ok, now I was able to find the server by using it's IP address in the run search box (not via Windows Explorer - which lists the server on the network, but can't find it when you double click the entry), but cannot authenticate.  The Samba access logs say: [user] FAILED with error NT_STATUS_WRONG_PASSWORD, even though I use my domain login when the login prompt appears.

Solved:

I typed in the FQDN when using Windows Explorer to map the network drive, e.g. \\publicserv..lcl\publicdir, and Windows 7 desktops finally can find the Samba server.  Don't ask me why, but the has to be in all caps, even though on all the Windows machines, the domain is in lowercase.

using maven to deploy to Tomcat 7

Ugh! I've been working on a simple webapp for a demo and using Maven for the build process. I was ready to deploy to a stand-alone instance of Tomcat 7 and I started to get a bunch of errors during the build when it came time to deploy to Tomcat. Using the -e switch for maven I started to see messages like:


[INFO] [tomcat:deploy {execution: default-cli}]
[INFO] Deploying war to http://localhost:8084/jasmineproject1
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD ERROR
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Cannot invoke Tomcat manager

Embedded error: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: http://localhost:8084/manager/deploy?path=%2Fjasmineproject1&war=
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Trace
org.apache.maven.lifecycle.LifecycleExecutionException: Cannot invoke Tomcat manager
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoals(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:719)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeStandaloneGoal(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:569)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoal(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:539)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalAndHandleFailures(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:387)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:348)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.execute(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:180)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:328)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:138)
at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:362)
at org.apache.maven.cli.compat.CompatibleMain.main(CompatibleMain.java:60)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:315)
at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:255)
at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:430)
at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:375)
Caused by: org.apache.maven.plugin.MojoExecutionException: Cannot invoke Tomcat manager
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.AbstractCatalinaMojo.execute(AbstractCatalinaMojo.java:149)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.AbstractWarCatalinaMojo.execute(AbstractWarCatalinaMojo.java:70)
at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultPluginManager.java:490)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoals(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:694)
... 17 more
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Server returned HTTP response code: 403 for URL: http://localhost:8084/manager/deploy?path=%2Fjasmineproject1&war=
at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1436)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.TomcatManager.invoke(TomcatManager.java:604)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.TomcatManager.deployImpl(TomcatManager.java:662)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.TomcatManager.deploy(TomcatManager.java:295)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.AbstractDeployWarMojo.deployWar(AbstractDeployWarMojo.java:85)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.AbstractDeployMojo.invokeManager(AbstractDeployMojo.java:85)
at org.codehaus.mojo.tomcat.AbstractCatalinaMojo.execute(AbstractCatalinaMojo.java:141)


Apparently, with Tomcat 7, the manager URL has changed, so deployments from an IDE, a build tool or the command line can't be done the old way.

I took look at the Tomcat documentation for the manager application, and the docs say:

All commands that the Manager application knows how to process are specified in a single request URI like this:

http://{host}:{port}/manager/text/{command}?{parameters}

where {host} and {port} represent the hostname and port number on which Tomcat is running, {command} represents the Manager command you wish to execute, and {parameters} represents the query parameters that are specific to that command.

But when I use the path /manager/text for anything I get a server response of:


FAIL - Unknown command /text


Does anyone know what the correct URL to deploy a webapp to Tomcat 7 is now? For now, I can get away with using NetBeans deploying directly to Tomcat and not using maven to build and deploy, but in the long run that is not a solution...

Update:
Found an obscure link, which I cannot remember off the top of my head, that documented that the URL for using the manager in Tomcat 7 should be /manager/html and not /manager/text as the Tomcat documentation states. Hmm... makes you wonder sometimes if someone actually verifies documentation before publishing it to the world...

Jasmine Javascript debugging? Maybe not quite there...

Whew! Sorry about going dark for a while. Am no longer a consulting Tech Architect at Boeing Commercial Aircraft and just started in a SW Architect/Engineer position at Fabric WorldWide...

Inherited the responsibility for writing new and maintaining existing Javascript plugins used in BA/BI of websites. Lot's of interesting asynchronous code, not necessarily strictly adhering to the "X" in AJAX. Since the code loads and executes asynchronously, it is difficult to unit test during the build process. So I have been looking into Javascript testing frameworks that can 1) run headless, i.e. not require a browser; 2) not require jQuery or other framework that supplies DOM access; 3) can test code asynchronously; 4) is compatible with Maven; 5) provides Mock capabilities.

Some candidates were Screw-Unit, jsUnit, QUnit, JSpec, YUI Test, DOH, and Jasmine. For one reason or another they started to drop off the list and that left me with Jasmine. It took a little while to get everything installed correctly into my dev environment and getting Maven configured corectly, but once that was done, it seemed like it would be smooth sailing to test some new code I was writing.

Interestingly, when I had Firebug activated on FF 4.x, I would get a SyntaxError when trying to eval() a regular expression string. I figured I could catch that error in a Jasmine test before it even got to a browser session. Unfortunately, no - Jasmine's Javascript engine does not generate an error when executing eval() on the same string that I sent to the browser. I had been counting on it trapping the error so I could return something informative to the caller, but it looks like I will have to try something else...

So much for trapping and throwing errors in Javascript during unit testing...
SIGH!