Apr 11
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 2 years since my last post. Things have been busy at work and home, and I haven’t had the time I would have liked to have to dedicate to writing. That being said, I’ve set a goal to get back to blogging (and writing in general). Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this commitment, but only time will tell.
And with that, WELCOME BACK!
Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2017/04/11/welcome-back/
Mar 29
OS X: How to Check for The Flashback Trojan – Switching To Mac
While Macs are known for being very secure, sometimes a bit of malware or the occasional virus slips through the cracks. Recently the virus dubbed “Flashback” was discovered. So far, this virus has infected an estimated 600,000 Mac users. While Apple has released an update patching the security flaw, it may still be lurking on your Mac.
If you’re worried that you may be infected, look no further. In this quick tutorial, we will be showing you how to detect the Flashback virus using a few Terminal commands.
Read the rest here: How to Check for The Flashback Trojan – Switching To Mac.
Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2013/03/29/os-x-how-to-check-for-the-flashback-trojan-switching-to-mac/
Apr 27
Recently I was asked to use XenDesktop 5 as a way for students in a developer training class to connect to individual Windows 2008 R2 server VMs. I agreed to set it up, but forgot that the Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) will not install on Windows 2008 R2 server, because the installer blocks it.
I did some searching on the web and came up with a post by Carlo Costanzo talking about installing the VDA on Windows 7. This post made me realize the agent was capable of running, but simply wouldn’t install because it KNEW I was trying to put it onto Windows 2008 R2 server.
After some more searching, I found a post in the Citrix forums by a guy named Patrick Suddereth, who had managed to install the agent onto Windows 2008 R2 using a TRANSFORM workaround. His post is here.
So, I downloaded the Microsoft Windows SDK and installed a sub-component called Orca on my Windows 2008 R2 dev box. This program allows you to edit the installation process of a MSI file, then generate a .mst (transform) file. A transform file simply tells the installer what to do differently from the default installation. In this case, we needed to remove the prerequisite check of the OS (and as I found out later, allow the MSI to be installed directly).
Here’s what I had to edit:
After the edit was complete, I exported the transform (.mst) and tried running it from command line:
msiexec /i XdsAgent_x64.msi TRANSFORMS=XD5W2K8Install.mst
I was unsuccessful that way, so I tried changing things up a little…
The agent installed successfully and the system rebooted as expected, but the machine refused to register with the XenDesktop 5 Controller. I tried turning off firewalls, restarting services, still nothing. Then I found a reference to a registry key that turned out to be missing!
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent]
Add a String (REG_SZ) called ListOfDDCs and for its value put the fully qualified name of your XenDesktop 5 server (like foo.bar.com).
Go register your machine using the Desktop Studio and it should connect immediately.
NOTE: I’m sure this is not supported by Citrix in any way, so use at your own risk.
If you’re installing the agent “normally”, you can check the box to automatically configure Windows firewall. Since we’re taking a backdoor, the configuration doesn’t happen. Here’s the excerpt from the Admin Guide:
To enable users to connect to desktops, you must configure your firewall as follows:
For communication between endpoint devices and desktops:
• %Program Files%\Citrix\ICAService\picaSvc.exe requires inbound TCP on port 1494. Because this connection uses a kernel driver, you may need to configure this setting as a port exception rather than a program exception, depending on your firewall software. If you are running Windows Firewall, you must configure this setting as a port exception.• %Program Files%\Citrix\ICAService\CitrixCGPServer.exe requires inbound TCP on port 2598
Special thanks to Jerry Jaworski for figuring this out and submitting it!
Permanent link to this article: http://www.startswithv.com/2011/04/27/installing-xendesktop-5-vda-on-windows-2008-r2-server/
