Is an SSH tunnel through Citrix Client possible?

Question

I know it is not strictly a programmer question, on the other hand, I would really like to be able to do a simple svn up on the production servers, which would save us a lot of hassle.

Or production servers are within a corporate network, and access is only allowed through a gateway server. From that we can access the actual servers via Remote Desktop. Because of this maintenance unfriendly setup we use a sftp server to get our files to the production server (where the ftp server alwys resets last modified date), so it is complicated to determine which files have changed.

So if it would be possible to setup a ssh tunnel from the actual server through the citrix connection, it would ease the whole update process.

(On further option which I consider is to use bazaar to push our updates to the sftp server and then pull the updates from there, but unfortunately there is no working svn plugin for bazaar available [on windows])

Nordic

Answer 1

Okay, not wanting this to remain unsolved, I posted the following on the usenet in alt.os.citrix:

G'day everyone

Someone asked me this question. I haven't a clue. Any ideas?

"the connection I have is PC -> Citrix Access Gateway -> actual Server. My question is, if it is possible to establish a ssh connection from my PC to the actual Server."

The response I got from a Catherine Jefferson was:

Should be. I do this all the time using an Access Gateway VPN, then ssh to servers inside the company LAN.

What version of the Access Gateway is this user running? I work for Citrix, might be able to get a more specific answer for him or her.

So may I suggest you hook into alt.os.citrix (probably via Google Groups if you don't have an NNTP tool) and buy into the conversation.

--Bruce

Contradance

6 years on, did you find a solution for this? our external facing servers are also only accessible via citrix and updating code is a bit of a process (since i'm write code locally). would be great to be able to hook up netbeans or something directly to the server. – Adp

@Adp Sadly, no. And I've moved on from that job too, so the question is moot. – Contradance

@Adp Did you find a solution? I'm in the same boat as you. – East

@East No, I did not unfortunately. I have since moved on from that job, so I'm no longer looking for solutions for the problem. – Adp

Answer 2

I do this a lot. The tunnel is like: ssh -nvCXAN -L 1494:10.0.2.39:1494 www.starshipping.com &

Then, you need an ICA file that points to localhost.

[WFClient]
Version=2

[ApplicationServers]
Connection To Citrix Server=

[Connection To Citrix Server]
WinStationDriver=ICA 3.0
TransportDriver=TCP/IP
ClientAudio=Off
DesiredColor=8
Username=yourusername
Domain=yourdomain
Password=xxxxxxxxx ; has to be encrypted. I pulled from another ICA file generated internally
ScreenPercent=97
TWIMode=OFF
Address=localhost

This all worked very fine on OSX until Citrix gave out a new version of the Citrix client which is now called the Citrix Online Plugin. Haven't been able to get it to work since then. Meanwhile, our VPN has been working fine, so haven't worried too much about it.

Gutenberg

This is the reverse of what was asked. You're offering citrix over ssh, but the question was ssh over citrix. – East

Answer 3

Citrix over SSH, How to Create a Key Pair for SSH Authentication Using PuTTYgen, Terminals. It seems that the answers are "out there" but not readily found. That was just five minutes in Google. HTH.

Contradance

No, it doesn't answer my question. I don't want to tunnel Citrix through SSH, but the other way around. – Nordic

Sorry, I'm not comprehending this at all well. Where is Citrix in this? Are you doing PC -> Citrix -> SSH -> server, or PC -> SSH -> Citrix -> server, or ... ? – Contradance

the connection I have is PC -> Citrix Access Gateway -> actual Server. My question is, if it is possible to establish a ssh connection from my PC to the actual Server. – Nordic