maci3jka/icaclient

Citrix ICA Client Plugin bundled with Mozilla Firefox

Citrix ICA-Client

Citrix ICA Client Plugin bundled with Mozilla Firefox

Citrix icaclient is a terribly bad designed an terribly bad implemented tool for remote desktop connections. It is a 32-bit Firefox plugin, even on 64-bit Linux systems, so it corrupts your operating system, or at least your Firefox installation. Even then, it need fixes and most of the time, it does not work. Still I have to use it on work. So I want to run it in a well defined environment: Encapsulate in a docker container.

It's based on DesktopContainers/base-debian

ICA-Client License

The CITRIX LICENSE AGREEMENT is stored in file LICENSE. You must accept the LICENSE if you use this docker container.

You could also download the client from:

https://www.citrix.com/downloads/workspace-app/linux/workspace-app-for-linux-latest.html

Environment variables and defaults

• WEB_URL
  • specify the url the browser will point to by default e.g. the citrix login portal url

Manual Build

In project directory run

docker build -t icaclient_image .

then run it

docker run -d --name icaclient \
-e 'WEB_URL=https://github.com' icaclient_image

you can skip to point 2 in Simple SSH X11 Forwarding

Usage: Run the Client

Simple SSH X11 Forwarding

Since it is an X11 GUI software, usage is in two steps:

1. Run a background container as server or start existing one.

docker start icaclient || docker run -d --name icaclient \
-e 'WEB_URL=https://github.com' desktopcontainers/icaclient

2. Connect to the server using ssh -X (as many times you want). Logging in with ssh automatically opens a firefox window

ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no \
-X app@$(docker inspect --format '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' icaclient)

3. Browse to your ICA service, start the client and enjoy.

You can configure firefox and set bookmarks. As long as you don't remove the container and you reuse the same container, all your changes persist. You could also tag and push your configuration to a registry to backup (should be your own private registry for your privacy).

Daily use

You can add alias to ~/.bashrc file with ssh -X command

alias ica="ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -X app@$(docker inspect --format '{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}' icaclient)"

save and open new terminal and start ica client by running ica in terminal.