Getting Java web applications to work on Citrix XenApp

You might get a request to to publish an Internet Explorer URL/link in XenApp for whatever reason. Web applications that use Java Runtime Environment (JRE)/Java applets do not play nicely with Citrix XenApp. The main problem is the Java cache. It wants to write its cache to:

C:\Program Files\Java\Cache\username\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache

by default during a XenApp session but nothing ever gets populated past the “username” part. The directory underneath will be blank and your web application will never load the Java applet.

I’m not a Java expert and I’m not even going to claim the following is any kind of best practice. But this is what I have done in my environments to make the web apps work using XenApp. If you have a better way of doing it, please do comment in this post.

So a little background, I am using Windows Server 2008 R2 with IE9 with Java (JRE) 6 Update 26 installed because my web app requires that specific version of Java.

1. Go to “C:\WINDOWS\Sun\Java\Deployment” and create a file called “deployment.config” with the following:

deployment.system.config=file\:C\:/WINDOWS/Sun/Java/Deployment/deployment.properties

2. Now create a file called “deployment.properties” in the same folder with your custom properties. What I do is generate a deployment file and then copy it over to this directory. To do this, open up Internet Explorer and go to your web app. Once Java is invoked, you will notice the Java icon in the notification bar in the bottom right.

Right click on it > Open Control Panel > Settings and you will see a path where temporary files are kept.

This is the default Java cache and will look like:

C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache

Navigate to:

C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\

and there will be a file called “deployment.properties” that was just generated for you. Just copy it over to the “C:\WINDOWS\Sun\Java\Deployment” folder as is.

Now you need to edit this file and specify the Java cache to be somewhere else. In my case, I want it to go to a folder on my D: drive called JavaCache. So all I add is this line (make sure the slashes are just like this, I know it’s a little odd):

deployment.user.cachedir=D\:\\JavaCache

So now my “deployment.properties” file will look like this:

Yours will probably look different than mine depending on which version of JRE you have installed.

3. Make sure to create the location you specified above. It can be a blank folder and will be populated the first time someone invokes Java. So in my case, I created:

D:\JavaCache

4. Now publish IE and the URL like you normally would in the XenApp console. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using 32 bit IE and installed 32 bit Java, DO NOT publish 64 bit IE by accident. It will not be able to use the 32 bit Java. You will need to install 64 bit Java if you intend to use 64 bit IE.

Here is an example of how 32 bit IE should be published on Server 2008 R2 in XenApp 6.5:

Command line:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" "http://www.google.com"

Working directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer

5. That’s it, now launch your published IE web app from your desktop via the WI and it should load just fine. Once Java is invoked, verify your Java cache is pointed at the new location. Just look in your notification area for the Java icon, right click on it > Open Control Panel > Settings and you should see “D:\JavaCache“.

One interesting thing to note, older versions of Java pull their deployment configuration from a different location. So if putting everything in:

C:\WINDOWS\Sun\Java\Deployment

does not work for you, try copying them to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\lib

and everything should work. Just make sure to edit your “deployment.config” accordingly with the new path to “deployment.properties“. An example, I have a web app that requires JRE 6 Update 11 and it pulls the deployment info from the lib folder and completely ignores the one in the Windows folder:

I also want to note that Oracle has pretty good documentation on configuring the deployment configuration file to your liking here:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/deployment/deployment-guide/properties.html

You can do quite a bit of customization to it. Some of my web apps require certain things to be configured in Java such as suppressing certain warning messages and I have used this article to set those switches. For example setting the Java System Cache:

deployment.system.cachedir=D\:\\JavaSystemCache

or Trusted Certs store:

deployment.user.security.trusted.certs=D\:\\JavaCertStore\\security\\trusted.certs
deployment.system.security.trusted.certs=D\:\\JavaCertStore\\security\\trusted.certs

or getting rid of Java warning prompts:

deployment.security.notinca.warning=false
deployment.security.expired.warning=false
deployment.security.mixcode=HIDE_RUN

or even setting Java heap size memory limits:

deployment.javaws.jre.0.args=-Xmx256m -Xms64m
deployment.javapi.jre.0.args=-Xmx256m -Xms64m

where 0 should be the Java version, but it has worked for me without having to specify it in the past. If you do want to put the version it should be like this:

deployment.javaws.jre.1.6.0.args=-Xmx256m -Xms64m
deployment.javapi.jre.1.6.0.args=-Xmx256m -Xms64m

Again, I’m not a Java expert so there may be an easier way of doing this but this is how I have been able to get my Java web apps to work with XenApp. Let me know of your experiences.