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Citrix How To Tech

Troubleshooting Citrix ADC (Netscaler) Gateway login Issues

Hendrickson’s How2

To troubleshoot authentication with aaad.debug module, complete the following procedure:

  1. Connect to Citrix ADC (NetScaler) Gateway command line interface with a Secure Shell (SSH) client such as PuTTY.
  2. Run the following command to switch to the shell prompt:
    shell
  3. Run the following command to change to the /tmp directory:
    cd /tmp
  4. Run the following command to start the debugging process:
    cat aaad.debug
  5. Perform the authentication process that requires troubleshooting, such as a user logon attempt.
  6. Monitor the output of the cat aaad.debug command to interpret and troubleshoot the authentication process.
Citrix ADC (Netscaler) Troubleshooting Gateway Login Issues

7. Stop the debugging process by pressing Ctrl+Z.

Run the following command to record the output of aaad.debug to a file:
cat aaad.debug | tee /var/tmp/<debuglogname>
Where /var/tmp is the required directory path and <debuglogname.log> is the required log name.


The output usually gives you a pretty good idea of what is going on. In this particular screenshot, I had a user who was trying to use the Citrix ADC change password feature. The output states that the first and second passwords do not match. I later discovered that Citrix ADC doesn’t do a validation check on the passwords, for matching or for complexity, so the user can put in different passwords or a password that doesn’t meet the environment’s complexity requirements and it will simply silently fail.