No connection to Citrix VDI since update to Monterey 12.1

[Michael Buumlscher]

Hi,

 

I can't connect to my Virtual Desktop with any of my MacBooks anymore, all running on macOS Monterey 12.1.

 

The window "Desktop will be started" pops up for a few seconds and then just disappears.

 

Tried to downgrade from the latest version to earlier ones, but this error is now with every version.

 

Any hints for me on how to solve this problem?

 

Connecting from Win 11 in the same network works fine btw.

 

The only thing that drew my attention in the logs was:

 

core.cpp | 1552 | performSslClientHandshake |   TC_UDT |    TT_ERROR | timed out waiting for handshake message

 

 

Best,

 

Michael

[Andy Vanderbeken]

I have just finished performing extensive testing by using 1 and the same base golden image (based on Windows Server 2019 v1809 (OS Build 17763.2746) and then only uninstalling and reinstalling  a different VDA agent inside it, resulting in the following 4 subiteration golden image builds with the following summarized results after putting them in limited production and gathering data from MAC users:

 

 

 

Build 1 (VDA 2112): 

 

-Unnamed sessions appear in Studio for MAC users

-MAC users always get disconnected while actively working in their published desktop session

-Upon a disconnect they cannot reconnect to their original session. As a result they get a new (additional) session whenever they try

 

 

Build 2 (VDA upgraded to 2203): 

 

-Unnamed sessions appear in Studio for MAC users

-MAC users always get disconnected while actively working in their published desktop session

-Upon a disconnect they cannot reconnect to their original session. As a result they get a new (additional) session whenever they try

 

 

Build 3 (VDA downgraded to 1912 LTSR CU5): 

 

-Unnamed sessions appear Studio for MAC users

-MAC users always get disconnected while actively working in their published desktop session (Solved)

-Upon a disconnect they cannot reconnect to their original session. As a result they get a new (additional) session whenever they try

 

 

Build 4 (VDA downgraded to 1912 LTSR CU3): 

 

-Unnamed sessions appear Studio for MAC users (Solved)

-MAC users always get disconnected while actively working in their published desktop session (Solved)

-Upon a disconnect they cannot reconnect to their original session. As a result they get a new (additional) session whenever they try (Solved)

 

 

Notes:

 

-In our corporate enviroment all MAC computers are always external computers connecting through Netscaler CAG, so never directly connecting to the storefront URL

-in ALL of the scenario's above the test was peformed of up- or downgrading the CWA client to respectively 2203.1, 2201, 2112 and none of them made a difference.

-1912 LTSR CU4 was explicitly not tested since it's well known public knowledge that this build was faulty and created ghost sessions upon login, including for windows users

-1912 LTSR CU3 has run rock solid in our environment for 2 years in a row. Never had any problems of this sort. That classifies this build -to me personally- as the golden standard of reference for Citrix VDA's currently.

-all tests were performed using a 2112 Studio + DDC server (just mentioning it in case that were to affects the unnamed session thing somehow)

-Not only Monterey but multiple different other OS MAC versions are affected by this bug. All of these different MAC clients were observed to have this problem under all scenario's except the 1912 LTSR CU3 VDA agent.

 

 

Looking at all this gathered data in front me of I feel that this is a problem purely and perhaps even exclusively at the server side, not CWA. Furthermore it's become clear that some functionality introduced in the VDA agent builds after 1912 LTSR CU3 starts causing this and the Citrix engineering team should be very easily able to reproduce this problem in a lab environment and troubleshoot it in detail.

[Kurt Hazlewood]

I am having the same issue.  I tried downgrading to 2111 but I still cannot connect for more than 30 seconds before being disconnected.  Mac OS 12.1.

[Björn Schläfli]

We have users with disconnects and the number is increasing every day. The problem starts as soon as MacOS Monterey is installed. It works flawlessly over HTML5.

This is why I compared Mac Workspace App with HTML5 and worked out which features are available with Workspace App only.

Secure Private Access

Workspace Browser

App Personalization Service

Auto Updates

Adaptive Transport

Auto-client Reconnect

Client Drive Mapping

HDX Insight with NSAP VC

Teams & Skype Optimization

DTLS 1.0 & 1.2

Smart Access

App Protection

Client Hardware Acceleration

True Multi Monitor

ADC Full VPN

Radius

Smartcard

SSO Citrix Files

Client IME Enhancements

Language Bar

Key Mapping server-side IME

 

The most interesting which could lead to disconnects by my understanding is Adaptive Transport. This feature is disabled in our site since we've tested it a few years ago and had a lot of issues with it. Maybe the Mac CWA tries to connect by udp?

EDT could be disabled on the client in a terminal with:

defaults write com.citrix.receiver.nomas HDXOverUDPAllowed -bool NO

 

Also Workspace App for Mac 2201 has been released a few days ago and it resolves some issues (mouse cursor disappears, graphic issues...). We'll let our users install this new version and test it again.

[Björn Schläfli]

I received a private version of a fixed Citrix Workspace App for Mac and it works. It has to be installed by terminal. Citrix couldn‘t tell me when it will be released for public.

my case id 81001534

 

[Andy Vanderbeken]

BREAKING NEWS everyone on the specific issue of MAC (and possible other non-windows) CWA clients getting randomly disconnected unexpectedly with the "connection interrupted" pop-up message: After months of troubleshooting with both the Netscaler engineering team and VDA engineering team I just finished testing a new special build with a private fix in it that seems to solve the problem completely. After all this troubleshooting I have have identified that:

 

-The problem only happens when the connection is happening through a Netscaler Gateway. So you won't see the problem when connected through a third party VPN or internal network.

-The CWA client must be a MAC (or potentially other non-windows). The issue will not happen with a Windows CWA

-This particular problem was introduced as early as of VDA agent 2112 and is present in all later editions.

-The problem only happens when inside the Citrix session from the MAC a client-redirected device or drive is being accessed or used in any way. The easiest way to force and bring out the problem is therefore to start a continuous copy of a very large file inside the Citrix session on the from the MAC client machine towards the VDA or remote network inside the VDA. Then start clicking with your mouse on the empty desktop until the problem happens. Using this way I can consistently bring out the problem within 5-30 seconds.

 

Suspected Root cause: It's still under investigation but if this is correct it seems to be a problem introduced by a change in the winstation driver wdica.sys

Solution: obtain a new/old version of the driver through a private fix (you can refer to my Citrix CASE 81283528) and replace the current faulty version with it. Alternatively wait for a future public fix version to appear.

 

I hope this makes your day or at least helps you ! Feel free to use the upvote button

[Michael Buumlscher]

On 12/27/2021 at 5:41 PM, Kurt Hazlewood said:

I am having the same issue.  I tried downgrading to 2111 but I still cannot connect for more than 30 seconds before being disconnected.  Mac OS 12.1.

 

Tested it on my new M1X MacBook and the Intel-one and even downgrading didn't help and I don't get any connection at all. 

[Luke Lyons]

I'm having this same issue with 2112.  I've installed 2111 on multiple users Macs and this works but has some bugs.  It has an issue with displaying all monitors, but isn't too hard of a fix. The problem is that with hundreds of devices then everyone is updating workspace and this is having to be fixed with multiple users. 

[Michael Buumlscher]

After your post I tried every version down to 2108. Clean uninstall, reboot, next version... No connection at all. For a second a window with the message "Desktop is starting" appears and after that nothing happens.

 

Are there no officials here who could support this issue? It is becoming really annoying now.

[Jason Baker]

I've had at least 4 users with this problem, opened a ticket on 12/28 but have had various reasons (on both sides) that I've not been able to connect with a support tech.  I wasn't as lucky downgrading to 2111, and I also tried the beta before I opened the ticket on 12/28.  Support has to know it's an issue, hoping to be able to sort it out once I can connect with support.

[Mick Swanson]

I've got a user on a Macbook Air (M1, 2020) on Monterey 12.1 that gets something very similar. She'll connect, but the session that comes up will be a black screen and unresponsive. I've also tried downgrading as far down as 2109 to no avail. The session does work via HTML5 in her web browser (We're on Citrix Cloud) so she's working okay for now. Hoping the next release resolves it. I haven't opened a ticket yet but will plan on it if 2201 doesn't fix.

[David Andreacuteasson]

Downgrading/ upgrading Citrix Workspace app didn't make a difference for our users, instead it got a bit better after disabling EDT, but the session still interrupts once every 30 minutes or so.

Adaptive transport is also disabled in our environment since way back and for us it seems that issues started once we upgraded VDA on our machines to 21.12 around 3 weeks ago.

We intend to try a rollback to an earlier VDA version, but since this issue only occurs for few of our Mac users, we are going to look at some more policy and client configurations.

 

[Björn Schläfli]

Hi David,

are your Mac users all on Monterey 12.1? I've got a new MacBook at home for testing with Big Sur 11.4 and it's disconnecting as well after 30 minutes.

[Björn Schläfli]

In Activity Manager of the mac os I can see that App Nap is active for Citrix Workspace App. No clue where to disable it. I didn't find any settings for it in battery settings as documented for older os versions.

No disconnect of desktop sessions connected to a desktop with old image containing vda 2012.

[Björn Schläfli]

David: What version of vda did you use before 2112?

[David Andreacuteasson]

20 hours ago, Björn Schläfli said:

David: What version of vda did you use before 2112?

Hi Bjoern,

 

Currently all of the mac users are on Monterey 12.1, but they have been on Monterey since November/ December
which makes me think that the OS version is not the issue.

 

We've used VDA 19.12 LTSR before, but decided to switch to current release to try out new features.
I have an open support ticket with Citrix Support and have asked them if we should rollback to an earlier
VDA version in order to see if the current VDA version is the issue, but they think we should keep it as it is for now.

[Björn Schläfli]

Tested with Monterey 12.1, Workspace App 2201, VDA 2109. Connection interrupted after 1 hour and 8 minutes. 

rpm warning in event log. event id 10. "Session reliability suspended the connection for user" and "Connection roken unexpectedly for user".

Yesterday I've tested  with session reliability disabled over 1494 and the connection has been interrupted also. No issue with session reliability. 

The interrupt happens after 5 minutes, after 50 minutes and after over 1 hour, completely erratic.

Saw that Apple has released Monterey 12.2. I'll give that a try.

[David Andreacuteasson]

3 hours ago, Björn Schläfli said:

Tested with Monterey 12.1, Workspace App 2201, VDA 2109. Connection interrupted after 1 hour and 8 minutes. 

rpm warning in event log. event id 10. "Session reliability suspended the connection for user" and "Connection roken unexpectedly for user".

Yesterday I've tested  with session reliability disabled over 1494 and the connection has been interrupted also. No issue with session reliability. 

The interrupt happens after 5 minutes, after 50 minutes and after over 1 hour, completely erratic.

Saw that Apple has released Monterey 12.2. I'll give that a try.

Thank you for the update, Bjoern.

 

I've noticed similar event logs in our environment each time a connection interrupts:

Event 12, RPM
"Connection broken unexpectedly for user Domain\user@domain.com, session 4."

Followed by Event 1019, TDIca
"The Citrix TDICA Transport Driver connection from 10.xx.xxx.x:52497 to port 2598 received an invalid packet during its CGP handshake phase."

 

Thought this had something to do with Session Reliability not working as intended for Mac users, but since you've already tried to disable session reliability, this wouldn't make much difference for our environment i guess.
 

Let me know if Monterey 12.2 makes any difference. Will let our users try Monterey 12.2 aswell.

[Björn Schläfli]

Hi David,

after 25 minutes my session on mac os Monterey 12.2 has been already interrupted and harder than before. I was typing text in a mail message and in the next moment my hosted desktop was gone and I've had the mac desktop in front of me. rpm warning in event log as well. 

I'll test rollback Workspace App to 2107, followed up by vda 2106, 2103 to see which component is causing the problem and if it really is the vda to see from which version it starts.

[Björn Schläfli]

more test results:

- Monterey 12.2, Citrix Workspace App 2107, VDA 2103 -> connection interrupted

- connection from same endpoint to a test server with vda 2103 and a production one with vda 2112 -> connection interrupted at the same time

 

This shows the issue exists with older vda versions also. Workspace App version doesn't matter. The mac device disconects the session not the server.

 

another test:
- connection to vda 2012 on a test server and to production vda 2112 at the same time -> 2112 connection interrupted, 2012 connection persists

 

This shows the issue seems to start from vda 2103. But we had vda 2103, 2106, 2109 in production since september 2021 with no issues for our Mac users. It seems to be something related to Mac OS or the cwa in combination with the vda. 

Strange and hard to find out.

[Michael Adam]

We can also confirm the problem with connection failures with Montery and CVAD 2112 on Intel Mac and M1 Mac. We have some customers with disconnections when using Citrix ADC (Storefront connections work fine). The problem sometimes occurs 10 seconds after connection start, sometimes later. 

 

A Citrix case has already been opened. 

 

In some situations it helped to turn off CGP. Unfortunately not with every customer. 

[Larry Heier]

Hello,

 

I was made aware of this issue by a client and downgrading the MacOS 12.x Citrix Workspace client to version 2102 resolves the issue for now.  Since he brought it up, I did a little testing and here's what I found Citrix:

 

This is on Windows 10 build 1909 VDI and we verified issue with VDA 2106 and 2112

Issue occurs with MacOS 12.1 and 12.2 (new)

issue occurs with Apple M1 and Intel Mac's

Issue changes with every Citrix Workspace clients after 2102.  Some display weird characters upon connections, other sessions are frozen and with Workspace 2112/2201, the session connects and then just disconnects. 

 

Hope there's a fix soon.

 

thanks,

Larry

[Björn Schläfli]

Michael Adam: We have the problem external over Gateway and internal over StoreFront directly. The fact that deactivating cgp helps you in some cases could possibly indicate Adaptive Transport EDT. MTU Discovery may be the cause. It may be worth deactivating DTLS on the gateway so that EDT is no longer functional.

[Björn Schläfli]

 

And this afternoon I've had 2 disconnects on VDA 2112 servers and guess what, also one on a VDA 2012. The same VDA 2012 has worked last week and thus I thought the issue with Mac's starts with VDA 2103 but it's not.

What are your case numbers from Citrix support, so that I can connect my case to yours?

[David Andreacuteasson]

On 1/31/2022 at 3:34 PM, Björn Schläfli said:

 

And this afternoon I've had 2 disconnects on VDA 2112 servers and guess what, also one on a VDA 2012. The same VDA 2012 has worked last week and thus I thought the issue with Mac's starts with VDA 2103 but it's not.

What are your case numbers from Citrix support, so that I can connect my case to yours?

My case number is 80988031 

[Björn Schläfli]

My case number is 81001534.

 

I've had a disconnect while connected to a server running an old image with vda 2012 installed. Worked for long time before the disconnect happened.