App-V 5 Beta Basic Troubleshooting

All right, you do have your new App-V Beta system installed according to the Beta Documentation – but your Apps just don’t appear on the Client Desktop! Where do you start? Let’s try to figure out some basic steps that can be the foundation of a troubleshooting guideline

Normally one would start at the point the error occurs (hence on the client) and follow the golden thread of communication down to the source. (see http://bit.ly/JFI5Z0). In here we’ll start (almost) at the beginning and follow the data down to the client.

For some guidance on how to install the server pieces, look at http://bit.ly/INN3y0.

Disclaimer:

The content provided here refers to the Beta Version of App-V 5. Upcoming releases including the final version will be different from that Beta. This validity of blog’s content including screenshots, statements and procedures may change or disappear.

 

Request:

I kindly ask you to use Microsoft Connect or (alternatively) http://www.appvirtguru.com to post troubleshooting questions.

Microsoft Connect is the platform to provide ‘official’ feedback to Microsoft about their pre-releases. Issues reported here may lead to software changes, documentation updates or blog posts by Microsoft employees.

AppvirtGuru is an independend forum that holds a dedicated section for App-V 5 Beta.

Both platforms are open to more people (than just me) who may assist you.

 

App-V 5 Management Server

The Management Server is an IIS Web Application, so checking if IIS is running and verifying some configurations there is a good starting point.

Verify that the Web Application really uses .Net version 4 (and not any older one). Open the IIS Management Console and navigate to the “Application Pools” node.

In the next step check if you can communicate with the service. On the Management Server machine, open a Browser and navigate to http://<managementservername>:Port (http://AppvMan:50536 in my example)

Here you should see a “Service” page. Or you go to http://<managementservername&gt;:port/help and you should see a list of supported commands.

You should not use “localhost” as the address, because sometimes IE then assumes a different security zone and prohibits some activities.

So, you are not sure which port you defined during installation? That’s an easy one: Read your Installation Documentation. Don’t have it (because somebody has stolen it)? There are some options.

You could check the “Binding” settings while you are in the IIS Management Console.

Or you browse the registry’s HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server/ManagementService. Here is the MANAGEMENT_WEBSITE_PORT that should lead your way.

So, now that you know that the service itself is listening, let’s check the Management Console. It is a sub-feature of the Management WebApp, so you can open it using a browser and http://<managementservername>:Port/Console. Make sure you have Silverlight installed.

If your Console shows a red-bar-error-message, communication issues with the Database are probably the cause.

A “common” reason (hey, we still talk about a Beta here- so how “likely” or “common” can things be?) are insufficient privileges on the Database. The good news is that App-V tells that quite descriptive.

While you are in the App-V Management Console – stop by the “Servers” tile to check if your Publishing Server is listed here.

App-V 5 Database

If issues occur, the first thing you should determine is, to which database the Management WebApp actually tries to connect to.  HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server is the root location for this info as well. Check values in the “ManagementDatabase and the ManagementService keys. (The registry screenshots were taken from a machine with a locally installed database)

Remember that it is probably necessary that the <domain>\<computername>$ account as well as your user has write access rights there.

App-V 5 Publishing Server

Now that we know that the “Management Infrastructure” components appear to work, let’s go a step further and have a look onto the Publishing Server. Depending on your decision you may have it installed on the same box as the Management Server – or you have chosen to use a separate machine for this.

I assume you already got it: Use a browser and open http://<publishingservername&gt;:port, first locally from the Publishing Server machine, then from a Client. The result should be an XML formatted page that does (or does not) include a list of applications your user has access to. When you perform this action after you ‘imported# some applications with the Management Console, enabled and assigned it to a group, the XML file should include some application information already.

For some info about the publishing server, check the registry’s HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Server/PublishingService.

For additional tweaks, open the “web.config” file that you can find it in the Publishing Server’s installation directory.

Take a closer look onto the “metadataRefreshInterval”. This one controls, how often the Publishing Service queries the Management Service for a new list of applications (defaults to 600[seconds]). If – for testing purposes – you want your newly published applications to appear on the Client in under 5 minutes – reduce that value. Of course decreasing this value in return decreases the load for both, the Management and the Publishing Service.

Package Repository

App-V 5 support HTTP and SMB to download the actual .appv file. You determine the protocole while you are importing the package with the Management Console. If you specify an URL, the client uses http. If you specify and UNC path, the client uses SMB. In my Publishing document example above, I’m using SMB for one and HTTP fo the other package.

There are actually two consideration to take:

Regardless of the protocol, the Client (user) has to have read permissions on that file

If using HTTP via IIS, you have to add  “.appv” as a MIME Type. I’d recommend to assign it as “application/appv” or “application/x-compressed”. In fact there are some general guidelines of what to use at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type.  (.appv can be opened read-only when making a copy and renaming it to .zip)

App-V 5 Client

The last piece of the deployment chain is the App-V Client (which actually also consists of several modules).

To see if and what Publishing Server has been configured for the Client, you can use the Registry and/or PowerShell.

In the Registry, HKLM/Software/Microsoft/AppV/Client/Publishing contains the list of configured servers.

You also can run the “get-AppVPublishingServer” Posh cmdlet to see a list of them.

Use “Sync-AppVPublishingServer” to refresh the application list (running the cmdlet without specifying  ‘–serverid 1’ is asking for the ID. ‘’1’ is usually a good answer here).

And then ?

So, what to do in the case of trouble. Even for the Beta all App-V Components write information into the Windows Event Log (eventvwr.msc), Application and Services Log/Microsoft/AppV.

However, the Event IDs aren’t configured to have a description yet, so you’d need to guess what the actual issue could be – or open a ticket at Microsoft Connect

Well, no, this is not a full-featured troubleshooting workflow, but I hope it’s of any help anyway.

Request:

I kindly ask you to use Microsoft Connect or (alternatively) http://www.appvirtguru.com to post troubleshooting questions.

Microsoft Connect is the platform to provide ‘official’ feedback to Microsoft about their pre-releases. Issues reported here may lead to software changes, documentation updates or blog posts by Microsoft employees.

AppvirtGuru is an independend forum that holds a dedicated section for App-V 5 Beta.

Both platforms are open to more people (than just me) who may assist you.

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Posted in App-V, Client, Management, Server
Tags: 5.0, App-V, HowTo, Management Server