CVAD 1912 LTSR CU2 and BCR with youtube

[Ken Z]

Hi Everyone

 

came across this issue with one of my customers.

 

They have a working Citrix VAD 1912 LTSR CU2 environment all built using Server 2019 including VDA servers. Internal devices (including Citrix VDA and client devices) are using a proxy outbound to access the internet.

I have configured Browser Content Redirection (Client Fetch, Client Render) using both Windows 10 fat clients and WES10 Thin clients. This has all been working fine for months.

Google/YouTube in their wisdom decided to display a popup to accept some new agreement, so whenever you go to www.youtube.com you get redirected to consent.youtube.com first, where you need to accept their terms and conditions, plus their cookies.

Unfortunately this seems to break BCR as when you start Chrome in the VDA from a client device, go to www.youtube.com, the Chrome BCR extension briefly flashes green, then redirects to you the consent.youtube.com page, which is not redirected. If you then client accept, the page tries to return to the main youtube page but then immediately returns you to the consent page. This is then trapped in a loop and you can't exit the consent page.

 

anyone come across this and found a solution?

 

NOTE using Server fetch client render causes other issues which doesn't give us a working solution.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

[Darryl Sakach]

Have you tried also redirecting consent.youtube.com? My guess is the consent is being saved on the VDA rather than the client. You need to accept the consent on the client via redirection.

[Ken Z]

Hi Darryl

 

thanks for the response. Citrix forums not as busy recently as in previous years :-(

 

tried adding it to the ACL whitelist but as the consent.youtube.com page doesn't contain any HTML5 code it's not being redirected, so that doesn't fix it. Tried adding consent.youtue.com to the authentication ACL list but that doesn't help either.

 

I've got a call open with CSS regarding this. Still waiting for a response.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

[Nico Mandersloot]

We encounter exactly the same issue on LTSR1912 and CU3. Only way arround is by signing into youtube with google account .then the redirect of consent is not made. Hope you  will be provided with a better solution. 

[Raymond Fitzpatrick]

Hi All,

 

Could you confirm if you add https://consent.youtube.com/* to the BCR authenication sites policy only (and not to the BCR ACL policy) does the issue continue to happen?

 

Regards

 

Ray

[Ken Z]

5 hours ago, Raymond Fitzpatrick said:

Hi All,

 

Could you confirm if you add https://consent.youtube.com/* to the BCR authenication sites policy only (and not to the BCR ACL policy) does the issue continue to happen?

 

Regards

 

Ray

Ray

 

yes it still does,

I've logged this exact issue with Citrix CSS and they've been able to replicate it in their own labs, but without a simple fix.

Since then I've collected some CDF logs for them and we're going to collect some developer logs from Chrome tomorrow to see exactly what's happening.

Will update this thread with any results.

 

Regards

 

Ken

[Nico Mandersloot]

we got  a mention on the slack forum regarding the  BCR authenication sites policy .  I tested again.  Only have :

https://www.youtube.com/* in BCR ACL policy

https://consent.youtube.com/* BCR authentication sites

 

this works for us.  Please make sure you have the *  at the end of both urls. 

We run LTSR1912 CU3

[Ken Z]

16 minutes ago, Nico Mandersloot said:

we got  a mention on the slack forum regarding the  BCR authenication sites policy .  I tested again.  Only have :

https://www.youtube.com/* in BCR ACL policy

https://consent.youtube.com/* BCR authentication sites

 

this works for us.  Please make sure you have the *  at the end of both urls. 

We run LTSR1912 CU3

Thanks Nico

 

I'd already tested that combination and it didn't fix the issue :-(

I upgraded the Farm last night from CU2 or CU3 so decided to give it another test this morning after your suggestion (entries in the two settings exactly as you've done). Unfortunately it's made no difference.

 

One thing i forgot to mention is that we're using Microsoft Edge Chromium rather than Google Chrome, but BCR and the BCR plugin work fine in this browser.

Using youtube before the consent window starting showing up was fine, and going to places like imdb.com and watching trailers on there is also offloading correctly.

 

I've got another session with Citrix today so hopefully will get to the bottom of the issue.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

[Nico Mandersloot]

23 hours ago, Ken Zygmunt said:

Thanks Nico

 

I'd already tested that combination and it didn't fix the issue :-(

I upgraded the Farm last night from CU2 or CU3 so decided to give it another test this morning after your suggestion (entries in the two settings exactly as you've done). Unfortunately it's made no difference.

 

One thing i forgot to mention is that we're using Microsoft Edge Chromium rather than Google Chrome, but BCR and the BCR plugin work fine in this browser.

Using youtube before the consent window starting showing up was fine, and going to places like imdb.com and watching trailers on there is also offloading correctly.

 

I've got another session with Citrix today so hopefully will get to the bottom of the issue.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

I will give it a try using Edge Chromium too. 

[Nico Mandersloot]

I tried it in Microsoft Edge too and it  also works as expected

[Ken Z]

On 6/29/2021 at 10:31 AM, Nico Mandersloot said:

we got  a mention on the slack forum regarding the  BCR authenication sites policy .  I tested again.  Only have :

https://www.youtube.com/* in BCR ACL policy

https://consent.youtube.com/* BCR authentication sites

 

this works for us.  Please make sure you have the *  at the end of both urls. 

We run LTSR1912 CU3

Hi Nico,

 

this used to work fine until Google decided they wanted us to consent to some new thing, so obviously the settings in the policy are correct otherwise they wouldn't have worked before.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

[Ken Z]

Update

 

about a week ago this problem "went away" without any changes at the customer end, so we can no longer reproduce the issue. I assume YouTube did something at their end...

 

Regards

 

Ken Z

[Nick Panaccio]

I'm seeing this now on my W10 1912 LTSR CU3 VDAs when accessing Citrix Desktop via an IGEL thin client. None of the additions mentioned here or in Slack are working. Anyone else seeing the same?

[Ken Z]

Hi Nick

 

There's a fix for BCR in CU5

 

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/1912-ltsr/whats-new/cumulative-update-5/fixed-issues.html#vda-for-multi-session-os

 

My customer was using a proxy.pac file which this fix addresses.

 

Additionally, there is some fixes for BCR in Workspace App. Download the latest pdf for Workspace App and search through it for "Browser Content Redirection". There are several fixes including a fix if you're using a proxy setting on the server and/or the client and trying to use BCR.

 

Regards

 

Ken Z