Thursday, November 24, 2011

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...